The director of the BBC’s epic Hollow Crown on Shakespeare, Judi Dench, Hugh Bonneville and Benedict Cumberbatch. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Singers include Daniel Sumegi, Isabel Leonard, Nathan Gunn, Lawrence Brownlee, Patricia Racette and Matthew Polenzani.

The October 2016 awards see a few of the companies who lost their four-year funding making some headway. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

All of human life is here, brilliantly juxtaposed both with and without clothes.

Affectionate story and strong cast help ladies find some of their feet.

The Gandalf of the keys is headed for Oz, and Sydneysiders take note, the sorcerer of Continuous Music is seeking an apprentice. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

It was the famous gift of 20,000 francs from the aging Paganini that allowed Berlioz to take time out from the drudgery of music journalism in 1839 and devote himself to a new work. Romeo and Juliet had been close to his heart since his then muse and now wife had played the heroine a decade earlier – but Berlioz was never one to choose the obvious. Shakespeare was too sublime to risk throwing it away on the Opéra (who had recently massacred his Benvenuto Cellini), so the French maverick embarked upon his third, and most unusual symphony to date. The result was a unique hybrid that even now struggles to find a home in the concert hall. A pity, as with a little imagination (and enough money for the substantial forces), it is full of drama, poetry and intensely original orchestral passages. In short, a masterpiece. Robin Ticciati has proven himself heir to Colin Davis with his Berlioz series on Linn (a fresh Fantastique, a moving L’Enfance du Christ and a very special Nuits d’Été) and this last instalment is, if anything, even finer. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra plays superbly and the Linn engineers achieve a fine separation…

The French conductor (and close associate of Maria Callas), who thought of himself as Viennese, has passed away at 92.

The Finnish composer shocked many in the establishment when he embraced a popular mysticism with his musical angels.

The Russian virtuoso discusses the transcendent joys of Liszt and why it’s important not to get carried away. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Netrebko’s stream of sound is often beautiful, though text isn’t her strong suit.

The Austrian Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) is nowadays best known for conducting the first recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. In his own day, though, he was equally renowned as a composer, especially of symphonic music and opera. Die Dorfschule (The Temple School) was his tenth out of a grand total of 12. The plot comes from a gripping Kabuki play about 10th-century Japanese feudal politics. An exiled chancellor’s son, Kwan Shusai, has been secretly brought up by Genzo, a loyal samurai who, along with his long-suffering wife, is now running a school. When the noble, Matsuo, demands the boy’s severed head, Genzo murders a recently enrolled pupil instead. Only at the end do we discover the dead boy is actually Matsuo’s own son who he enrolled in Genzo’s school as a decoy to save the life of Kwan Shusai. A contemporary of Strauss, Weingartner’s music sounds a little leaner, yet he’s very much a student of the post-Wagner school. But where the symphonies are often sumptuous, Die Dorfschule has an austerity that marries perfectly with its grim tale of honour and sacrifice. Only in the Imperial march does the composer let his hair down. The cast are… Continue reading…