Classical Companion

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Classical Companion
Sir Malcolm Sargent: Conductor
Christopher Breunig  |  Dec 18, 2020
The most urbane of English podium figures, he delighted audiences as much as he antagonised orchestral players. Christopher Breunig ponders his relevance today

Herbert von Karajan? A sort of musical Malcolm Sargent.' It was a typical Beecham putdown, even though he admired his younger colleague's skill with choral forces, and was assisted by him in 1932 when Beecham was creating his London Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Classical Companion
Sviatoslav Richter: Pianist
Christopher Breunig  |  Nov 08, 2019
Held back from performing in the West until he was 45, the Odessa musician could be idiosyncratic or sound overwrought. Christopher Breunig looks at his life and legacy

Wait until you hear Richter' was the reaction to praise when Soviet pianist Emil Gilels made his 1955 States debut. And whereas he and violinist David Oistrakh both performed with American orchestras that year, audiences had to wait a further five before the authorities allowed Gilels' Ukrainian colleague to appear at Carnegie Hall, New York, and in Boston and Chicago.

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Classical Companion
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
Peter Quantrill  |  Jan 09, 2024
Christmas entertainment, orchestral showpiece or a human drama? This farewell to the stage is all three, says Peter Quantrill, as he sits down with boxes of Sugar-Plum Fairies

How did Nutcracker ever catch on? Following the premiere in St Petersburg in December 1892, one critic delivered the coup de grace. 'First of all, Nutcracker can in no event be called a ballet. It does not comply with even one of the demands made of a ballet. Ballet, as a basic genre of art, is mimed drama and consequently must contain all the elements of normal drama.'

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Classical Companion
Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasia
Peter Quantrill  |  Mar 10, 2022
A sense of both physical space and conceptual time is essential in order to realise fully the beauties of this essence of Englishness in music, says Peter Quantrill

It would be hard to overstate the impact of the Tallis Fantasia on both listeners and composers of the last 70 years, for many of whom it has opened a great wooden door on to both Vaughan Williams and a wider world of music that feels spiritual in character without being tied to a particular faith or religion.

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Classical Companion
Zubin Mehta: Conductor
Peter Quantrill  |  Jul 19, 2021
'The fourth man' on the stage of the biggest classical music concert in history. A 60-year career from Bombay to Rome via Vienna, surveyed by Peter Quantrill

India has a classical music tradition of its own: does it need the European sort? The British imperial colonialists thought not, and hired Italian salon orchestras to play in their clubs and hotels without fostering any programme of music education.

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