Mahler’s First was one of them. I vividly recall the normally somnolent Thursday afternoon audience rising to its feet to cheer after his 2002 performance. Sadly, neither that, nor the 2008 reprise, has ever been issued. I think his reading had both more Innigkeit and sheer élan than this reading by Ashkenazy, who I doubt has anything particularly interesting to say in this work. The opening string shimmer lacks mystery and expectancy. Is this, perhaps, because he’s a pianist, not a violinist and can’t convey the importance of a sustained string tremolo? The Wayfarer theme goes well enough but, overall, there is little sense of verdant nature awakening to a new day. The Scherzo needs more of what Germans call Schwung (“oomph”), and the trio should resemble an inebriated swoon, which doesn’t quite happen here. In the klezmer-meets-Kurt Weill third movement, again, the music is played a little too straight. The final sprawling movement is always a challenge and Ashkenazy and co. don’t sweep the field here either. Even the famous molto expressivo string passage sounds slightly perfunctory in their hands. Leonard Bernstein is, as usual in Mahler, wonderful in both his recordings, but my favourite performance is Guilini’s in…

Vladimir Ashkenazy is well known for his fascination with the earthier side of Russian orchestral music. His orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition is far more liturgical than Ravel’s, and so it is to be expected he would take a similar view with Prokofiev. Pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk follows Ashkenazy’s lead here: his interpretations and playing are remarkable, with many original touches and a dazzling technique. Ashkenazy as conductor understands what is required in this music and is a superb collaborator. The results are terrific. Like Beethoven, Prokofiev is able to alternate between the male and female moods in his music, setting beautifully dreamy themes against hard brutality. This is what makes the music so attractive and gives it life. The first is the simplest of the five works and easiest to bring off, provided you keep at it. And in this performance they do. This short piece won the composer his spurs in the 1914 Rubinstein Competition. It was a triumph and Glazunov begrudgingly awarded him first prize. Both it and the third concerto leap at you, embracing, irresistible. The third is generally regarded the greatest of the five and it is the most popular, being more comprehensible at… Continue…

French pianist's lilting yet powerful performances leave us wanting more.

Vladimir Ashkenazy is well known for his fascination with the earthier side of Russian orchestral music.

Much of his church music, admittedly, lacks any more than a hint of introspection, spirituality or light and shade. One always has the impression that in Haydn’s take on Catholicism a good time was had by all. Even the supposedly darker Missa in tempore belli, nicknamed the “Timpani Mass”, really becomes ominous only with the menacing timpani figures in the Agnus Dei depicting Napoleon’s army besieging south-east Austria. Otherwise, only the unsettled minor key mood of the Benedictus undermines the otherwise joyful mood. Interestingly, the man whom Beethoven a few years later considered (initially at least) to be a liberator was viewed by the more conventional Haydn as a threat to civilisation. That said, performances of this calibre deserve an unreserved welcome. These two works were composed 24 years apart, the Mariazellermesse in 1782 as a celebration of the ennoblement of a prominent Catholic, a retired army officer who organised Marian pilgrimages. Owen Burdick and his forces (the Trinity Choir refers to the Trinity Episcopal Church in Wall Street, Manhattan, not Trinity College, Cambridge) and REBEL Baroque orchestra are agile and idiomatic in this music while, among the soloists, the men are adequate but the real star in both masses…

Crank the amp and forget the neighbours – let everyone share in Mozart’s final creation.

Powerful stuff! David Oistrakh would have been proud.

In 1975 few music lovers knew this work. It was the young firebrand Roger Woodward who made the first complete recording in the West.

The BBC Symphony seems to have assimilated a genuinely Czech sound into their playing.

The sound is so stunning it’s hard to believe these are live performances.

The two soloists are excellent, and the outstanding Akademie für Alte Musik plays at the high level we have come to expect.

On the strength of this selection, Vivaldi’s tenor arias seem to lack the variety of those for the female voice.