We are lucky to have an extraordinary array of mature interpretors of Mozart (we’ll each have our own list) around at the moment and Leonskaja is as accomplished as any. There are some recordings which one knows from the first few phrases are going to be just right…
This release on the Dutch group Matangi’s own label is all too depressingly timely. It comprises of quartets written in the Soviet Union by composers who were always under stress from the censorious regime…
There are performances where the conductor is barely discernable, where the music feels everyday and standard, its familiarity enough to make it presentable, the orchestra playing as they always do. Semyon Bychkov simply doesn’t allow that level of complacency, from orchestra or listener…
I am a sucker for Handel’s operas. Of all the composers from the first half of the 18th century he managed to combine dramatic force with engaging and memorable melody best…
There is something luxuriously domestic about this recording. The quartet feel appropriately as if they are in a not particularly grand 18th century drawing room on a pleasant New England Autumn evening…
I was surprised to find I had a tenuous personal connection to one of these pieces, in that I spent several childhood summers at Kilravock Castle, hard by Culloden, where some of the music of Thomas Erskine was discovered in manuscript…