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Stephen Pritchard

Saint-Saëns: Piano quartet in B flat major, Piano quintet in A minor, Barcarolle in F major – review

Camille Saint-Saëns's affinity with Mendelssohn is perhaps nowhere more clear than in his chamber music. They both poured a surfeit of invention into their works for piano and strings, shaping their ideas with startling clarity and abundant charm, but in

Mozart; Bruckner: Symphony No 41, 'Jupiter'; Symphony No 7 - review

Richard Osborne's excellent liner notes tell us that Neville Cardus wrote in the Guardian that a "raving" audience filled the Royal Festival Hall on the night of 6 April 1962 when Herbert von Karajan brought the Vienna Philharmonic to London for this hist

Mozart: Requiem Realisations - review

Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Academy of Ancient Music, Manahan Thomas, Rice, Gilchrist, Purves/Cleobury (King's College) Eight bars into the Lacrimosa of his Requiem, poor, sick Mozart could continue no further. His death left the piece to be fi

Bob Chilcott: Everyone Sang - review

Wellensian Consort/Christopher Finch (Naxos) It's difficult for any good choral ensemble, amateur or professional, not to include music by Bob Chilcott in their programmes these days: he seems impossible to ignore, probably because he writes such engag

Reginald King: Song of Paradise - review

Mark Bebbington (piano) (Somm) Mark Bebbington , that great champion of British piano music whose recordings of Delius, Bax, Vaughan Williams and Mathias have won deserved praise, takes us back to a vanished world once dominated by Reginald King (1904-

Nabucco; Bach Marathon; Tine Thing Helseth, Kathryn Stott – review

With a deranged, deluded king, a powerful love triangle and a whole race of persecuted people, Nabucco 's dizzying plot has more twists than a scenic railway, so it's quite an achievement to make it dull. It's a fine idea to move the action to the 20th

Zelenski, Zarzycki: The Romantic Piano Concerto, Vol 59 - review

Jonathan Plowright (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Borowicz (Hyperion) Jonathan Plowright continues his persuasive advocacy of the Polish 19th- and early 20th-century repertoire with these two rarities in Hyperion's seemingly inexhaustible

Steve Reich, London Sinfonietta; Mitsuko Uchida; Tallis Scholars - review

Bliss. Such a simple word, such a difficult state to achieve. When we talk about musical bliss (and no, I don't mean Sir Arthur) we might think, for instance, of the last movement of Mozart's "Jupiter" or his Act 3 sextet in Figaro.

Steve Reich, London Sinfonietta; Mitsuko Uchida; Tallis Scholars - review

Bliss. Such a simple word, such a difficult state to achieve. When we talk about musical bliss (and no, I don't mean Sir Arthur) we might think, for instance, of the last movement of Mozart's "Jupiter" or his Act 3 sextet in Figaro.

Mozart: Piano Concertos 13 & 14 - review

Janina Fialkowska (piano), Chamber Players of Canada (Atma Classique) Widely praised for her interpretations of Chopin, Janina Fialkowska here returns to the chamber versions of Mozart piano concertos, continuing a series she began with Nos 11 and 12.