Classical Companion

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Christopher Breunig  |  May 08, 2019
There's more to this composer than 'Fingal's Cave' and the 'Italian' Symphony. Christopher Breunig offers some recommendations for your record collection

Ilooked over my Symphony and the Minuet – Lord! – bored me to tears, it was so monotonous.' That was the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, about to come to London in 1829 to present his first (orchestral) symphony, and writing to his parents.

Christopher Breunig  |  Mar 12, 2019
Winning a conducting prize at Tanglewood kick-started his career, and at Boston he dived into recording at the deep end. Christopher Breunig gives a resume

In some recitals with other kids all playing nice-sounding pieces, I'd come crashing in with Bartók, or some American composers I was already playing – Henry Cowell, for instance.' That was Michael Tilson Thomas, looking back to his pre-teens in an interview given in the June '87 issue of HFN when he was working and recording with the London Symphony Orchestra as its principal conductor (he's now the LSO's Conductor Laureate).

Peter Quantrill  |  Apr 26, 2025  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2025
Ranging from Anthony Lewis’s striking 1953 recording to modern Italian performances, the ‘1610 Vespers’ have a short but distinguished discography, says Peter Quantrill
Peter Quantrill  |  Oct 12, 2021
A silly farce or a social experiment gone wrong? There are no right answers – though a few wrong ones – to the riddle of this dramma giocoso, says Peter Quantrill

Giochiam', says Don Alfonso, to set in motion Mozart's final collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte: let's play a game. The nature of the game is a wager over feminine fidelity, laid with two soldiers to prove that, in the moral of the untranslatable title, 'all women are like that'.

Christopher Breunig  |  Sep 08, 2020
Were these meant to be heard as a single entity? Does the theory survive scrutiny? Christopher Breunig suggests library versions both 'historically aware' and traditional

When Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Teldec recording of Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony appeared in 1985, his sleeve essay suggested the score was in fact a musical translation of a cathartic event from his youth, (i) concerning his mother's death, and (ii) the subsequent reconciliation with his father, and as such complete.

Peter Quantrill  |  Mar 26, 2024
The jazzical nature of this ostensibly religious piano cycle invites an array of approaches that range from reverential grandeur to gaudy showmanship, finds Peter Quantrill

In the summer of 1944, the head of music at French radio asked the 35-year-old Olivier Messiaen, and the Catholic writer Maurice Toesca, for a reflection on the Nativity in words and music, to be broadcast over the Christmas season. Beyond its title, there is nothing very Christmassy about the piano cycle that became Vingt Regards, which may be why Messiaen's contribution was eventually shelved.

Peter Quantrill  |  Feb 03, 2023
To focus on a few celebrated solo recordings is to miss the bigger picture of a complete musician, says Peter Quantrill, paying tribute to a cellist who played for Queen Victoria

Fifty years after his death, it is worth remembering that Pablo Casals was the first celebrity cellist of the modern age. What Paganini had done for the violin, and then Clara Schumann and Liszt for the piano – making a viable career out of touring as a solo virtuoso, as singers had done – it took Casals until the turn of the 19th-20th century. Yet he commissioned very little for his instrument, and then abruptly ceased that solo career at its zenith.

Peter Quantrill  |  Mar 09, 2025  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2025
Peter Quantrill explores the career and catalogue of a renowned Bach Evangelist and Schubert tenor with a peerless ability to communicate directly with his listener
Peter Quantrill  |  Oct 02, 2024
A jealous husband, a young nun, a cunning father... late-style lightness of touch is the key when it comes to this still-underrated masterpiece of verismo, says Peter Quantrill

By rights, every major opera company should be mounting Il trittico in this Puccini anniversary year, marking the centenary of his death. Yet they will likely revive the reliable house-fillers of Butterfly, Tosca and Turandot, and the reasons are not hard to find. Trittico lacks a true diva role. It demands instead a tightly knit company cast of diverse talents, and a conductor and director who both believe in the unity of the whole as its composer did.

Peter Quantrill  |  Oct 11, 2022
A midsummer pageant of seduction and celebration, dressed in French and English costumes – Peter Quantrill explores the history of this 'dramatick opera' on record

Yokels in drag, flying scenery and orange trees: even by the lavish standards of theatrical entertainment in late 17th century London, The Fairy Queen dazzled spectators of its premiere at the Dorset Garden Theatre. 'The Court and Town were wonderfully satisfy'd with it' said one contemporary source – and no wonder – 'but the Expences in setting it out being so great, the Company got very little by it'.

Peter Quantrill  |  Sep 12, 2023
Though setting a poem of the American Gothic, this choral symphony breathes Russian soul in every bar. Peter Quantrill finds that modern versions have the edge on record

Towards the end of his life, Rachmaninoff looked back in the early 1940s and regarded his recent Symphonic Dances as one of his finest works. But in the same bracket he placed his choral symphony of three decades earlier. Again, as well he might, for he borrowed and adapted the opening teaser of the early piece for the later one, as well as a good deal else such as the Dies Irae plainchant. This became a signature theme (almost an idée fixe), and an orchestral palette which continually evokes bells without resorting to the literal use of them.

Christopher Breunig  |  Jun 05, 2019
A turning point for the composer, this great romantic piece was introduced to a wider audience with the film Brief Encounter. Christopher Breunig offers his library choices

Anyone who has seen the 1945 British film classic Brief Encounter will remember the music that enhanced the performances by the two principal stars, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard – Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. (The pianist for the soundtrack was Eileen Joyce.)

Peter Quantrill  |  Jun 21, 2022
Young man's music, emulating Classical ideals while coloured with wistfulness for something lost... Peter Quantrill on the recorded legacy of an elusive masterpiece

Ravel was a sharp-suited Parisian-about-town in his late 20s when he wrote the String Quartet during 1902-3. He had a decade of composition behind him, mostly piano pieces, but little to show for it. He didn't even have a graduation certificate from his years of study at the Paris Conservatoire, still less any recognition conferred by the coveted Prix de Rome, despite several unsuccessful attempts to win over the conservative judges while pointedly breaking their rules and fastidiously refining his own voice.

Peter Quantrill  |  Dec 14, 2021
Verdi holds the key to understanding the work of the old-school maestro, 80 this year. Peter Quantrill surveys a tumultuous career and finely honed legacy on record

I remember how my heart skipped a beat one hot afternoon in 1989 when, browsing through the stacks of a secondhand LP emporium in London, I pulled out Riccardo Muti's recording of Tchaikovsky's 'Little Russian' Symphony. It was a noisy Italian EMI pressing – 'La Voce del Padrone' – and there was a huge scratch in the middle of Romeo and Juliet on Side A.

Peter Quantrill  |  Apr 26, 2021
A sensuously beautiful tribute to old Vienna, to the waltz and a fast-vanishing age of elegance. Peter Quantrill explores the opera's background and suggests recordings

The premiere of Der Rosenkavalier took place on the 26 January 1911, at the Royal Court Opera in Dresden. The success of the piece became an event in itself, perhaps the most glittering triumph in the history of opera. Special trains were laid on to ferry visitors from Berlin eager to attend extra performances. The work was immediately taken into the international repertory, and there it has remained.

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