SCHUBERT Piano Sonatas D850; D;840; D894

Paul Lewis

Reviewing can be a frustrating business sometimes: recordings that bode so well on paper but disappoint in reality, or others...

Reviewed by Harriet Smith in issue: 02/2012

SCHUBERT Sonatas, Impromptus & Moments Musicaux

András Schiff

This is something special and I urge everyone interested in the discography of Schubert’s piano music to hear it. Unsure...

Reviewed by Stephen Plaistow in issue: 06/2015

WEINBERG The Passenger; The Idiot

Angelica Voje | Anne-Theresa Møller | Artur Ruciński | Bartosz Urbanowicz | Bryan Boyce | Elena Kelessidi | Elzbieta Ardam | Juhan Tralla | Lars Møller | Liuba Sokolova

There are any number of Russian operas after Prokofiev but not too many that have been staged in the West,...

Reviewed by David Fanning in issue: 02/2016

ROSSINI Le Siège de Corinthe (Abbado)

Carlo Cigni | Cecilia Molinari | Chorus of the Teatro Ventidio Basso | Iurii Samoilov | John Irvin | Luca Pisaroni | Nino Machaidze | Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI | Roberto Abbado | Sergey Romanovsky

Rossini’s Le siège de Corinthe, written for the Paris Opéra in 1826, was a game-changer in the history of opera....

Reviewed by Richard Osborne in issue: 05/2024

Verdi Simon Boccanegra

Adolf Dallapozza | Alfred Sramek | Anna Gonda | Anton Dermota | Anton Wendler | Axelle Gall | Brigitte Fassbaender | Charles Naylor | Claudio Abbado | Eberhard Waechter

On November 5th, 1955, the Vienna State Opera returned to its restored home, damaged in the war. The opera was...

Reviewed by Alan Blyth in issue: 2/1999

Wagner Parsifal

Falk Struckmann | Jaap Van Zweden | Julia Westendorp | Katarina Dalayman | Klaus Florian Vogt | Netherlands Radio Choir | Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra | Netherlands State Male Choir 'Latvija' | Robert Holl

Something very striking happens during the orchestral transition to the final scene of the last act. It’s a performance where...

Reviewed by Arnold Whittall in issue: 12/2011

Lieux retrouvés – Music for cello & piano

Steven Isserlis | Thomas Adès

This blissfully unhackneyed and brilliantly executed recital takes memory in all its facets as its theme, and the highlight is...

Reviewed by Arnold Whittall in issue: AW/2012

MOZART String Quintets K515 & K516

Antoine Tamestit | Ébène Quartet

Mozart’s most famous quintets conclude a sequence of four instrumental works from the winter and spring of 1786 87 whose...

Reviewed by Richard Wigmore in issue: 04/2023

Münchner Philharmoniker 125 Years

This anniversary set gets off to a solid start with a weighty, plain-spoken 1953 Eroica and a pastorally accented 1956...

Reviewed by Peter Quantrill in issue: 01/2019

MOZART Ecstasy & Abyss

Ann Hallenberg | Elin Rombo | Lucas Debargue | Martin Fröst | Swedish Chamber Orchestra

‘You gotta get a gimmick’, Louise is advised in Gypsy. In opera-directing circles, it’s sometimes disparagingly called a Konzept. The...

Reviewed by Mark Pullinger in issue: 07/2023