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Music 94% · Film & TV 6%
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Like many avid record collectors my first awareness of Michael Tilson Thomas were the Deutsche Grammophon recordings which arrived in the wake of his appointment as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the age of just 24. As recipient of the Koussevitsky Prize in 1969 it was almost a foregone conclusion. The word ‘auspicious’ didn’t even begin to cover it. One of those DG discs – a sensational pairing of Ives, Ruggles, and Piston (start as you mean to go on) – was tantamount…
Hugely impressed by Ava Bahari here. She is truly a storyteller. There is untold generosity and cleanness to the playing and the best way I can express what sets apart her reading of this oft-performed piece is the value with which she imbues every note, be it part of a singing phrase or a driving rush of pyrotechnics. Nothing is ‘incidental’, every note has a purpose. And it’s generous too, expansive in the best sense with natural sounding rubatos. Her partner in this endeavour – Santtu-Matias…
Wednesday 29 July 2026 6.30pm Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zedel Comparing Notes brings stars of the West End and Broadway to Crazy Coqs, Live at Zedel. In a lively and informal mix of performance and conversation host Edward Seckerson will be getting up close and personal with these musical theatre luminaries and emerging stars, exploring the stories behind the songs and the personalities behind the artistry. Fresh from winning the 2025 Tony Award for Best featured Actor in a Musical, Merseyside-born…
Two mythical birds – the one immortalised by Villa-Lobos – Uirapuru – an endangered species in our musical universe. All kudos to Dudamel for realising the songful connections with it and Stravinsky’s Firebird and rejoicing in them so wholeheartedly. They were written within a decade of each other and you might even say that in the rarely heard Villa-Lobos ballet Stravinsky’s immortal bird was reborn in the Brazilian rain forest. Its ear-wormy chant, heard across flute and soprano saxophone, is…
A centenary conversation celebrating a great conductor and an outstanding Mahlerian The conductor Klaus Tennstedt was born on June 6, 1926. After his arrival from East Germany to the West, he held chief conductor posts with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg (1979-81), and with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1983-87), with whom he recorded extensively, including a Mahler symphony cycle (of which No 8 won a Gramophone Award back in 1987). To mark the anniversary Warner Classics has issued…
Monday 7 September 2026 6.30pm Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zedel Comparing Notes brings stars of the West End and Broadway to Crazy Coqs, Live at Zedel. In a lively and informal mix of performance and conversation host Edward Seckerson will be getting up close and personal with these musical theatre luminaries and emerging stars, exploring the stories behind the songs and the personalities behind the artistry. French-born performer Lily Kerhoas is recognised as one of contemporary musical theatre’s…
This wonderful score is such a good fit for Dudamel’s sleek Los Angeleans. There is what I would call a tinge of Americana about Prokofiev’s big lyric melodies in this of all his pieces and within a few bars of the ballet’s intriguingly understated opening pages the Los Angeles Philharmonic violins are overheating in ways … [Read More]
Fresh off their run as Eurydice and Orpheus in the West End’s Hadestown, Desmonda Cathabel (Mamma Mia: I Have a Dream, Miss Saigon, Disney’s Aladdin) and Dylan Wood (Orphans, Moorcroft, No Love Songs) are no strangers to playing doomed lovers together. “Wood’s chemistry with Desmonda Cathabel’s Eurydice is mesmerising.” — Musical Theatre Review “Her chemistry with Dylan Wood’s Orpheus is playful and magical. It’s this infectious connection between the two that makes the tragedy of Hadestown all…
Writer, Broadcaster and Presenter EDWARD SECKERSON was one of the last journalists to interview the legendary Leonard Bernstein less than a year before he died in 1990. A passionate, some might say fanatical, advocate of Bernstein’s exceptional talents as a conductor, composer and teacher, Seckerson has championed the Bernstein cause over many years now, winning the trust of the Bernstein family with his writings and live shows. In this new show – a mix of talk and cabaret – he is partnered by…
Marti Webb is renowned for her leading roles in West End musicals. She gained prominence through performances in productions such as Evita, in which she played the role of Eva Perón from 1979, and Tell Me on a Sunday, a one- woman show specifically written for her by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black. Webb’s career spans over five decades in musical theatre and recording, establishing her as one of Britain’s most enduring stars in the genre. Her breakthrough came in the late 1970s with Evita at…
There have been a couple of stand-out recordings of Mahler’s ‘rogue’ Seventh in recent times – none more illuminating or hard to beat than Rattle’s Bavarian RSO account – but after Paavo Järvi’s brilliant rendering of the fledgling First Symphony with his Zurich orchestra I was more than ready for this. What I really like … [Read More]
I don’t think anyone would argue with the assertion that this is one of the great theatre scores of the last half century. That Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens actually auditioned for it – three or fours songs submitted for consideration on cassette tape – only makes the story even more extraordinary. I, of course, … [Read More]
Shostakovich’s two cello concertos plainly share the same musical DNA – but it’s almost as if the Second (which I am delighted to see becoming more and more core repertoire and a work of choice among leading cellists) has grown out of the First elaborating on the former’s concision but sharing that acute sense of … [Read More]
I do believe this is one of the best – perhaps even the best – account of Mahler’s precocious First Symphony that I’ve heard on disc since the celebrated Bernstein/Concertgebouw version. Paavo Järvi and his Zurich orchestra really do make it feel and sound brand new. Its daring colourations are relished, its youthful audacity writ … [Read More]
A whiplash Scapino, ducking and diving with impunity, sets the tone of this marvellous disc. As so often with John Wilson’s work it’s the precision, the clarity, and the keenest articulation that defines it. The level of virtuosity displayed by this band can be, and is here, absolutely jaw-dropping. Wilson has long admired the legendary … [Read More]
The great practitioners of Broadway and Hollywood – composers, arrangers, orchestrators – spawned catalogues of what might be considered more ‘legitimate’ music that the world rarely saw or heard. Broadway’s ‘Music Man’ Meredith Wilson’s symphonies, Hitchcock’s Bernard Herrmann’s operas – and the figures featured here: Robert Russell Bennett whose orchestrations enhanced the tunes of Rodgers, … [Read More]
