First Person: Conductor Maxime Pascal on Stockhausen at the Southbank Centre

FIRST PERSON: MAXIME PASCAL On conducting Stockhausen at the Southbank Centre

The man in control of a cosmic opera tonight on its visionary German composer

Stockhausen stands alongside Monteverdi and Beethoven as a composer who exploded the understanding of his art. Stockhausen deeply changed the relationship between space, time and music; there’s a human, intimate dimension to his composition, and he predicted the future.

British Paraorchestra: The Nature of Why, Brighton Festival 2019 review - it's a happening!

★★★★ BRITISH PARAORCHESTRA, BRIGHTON FESTIVAL It's a happening!

Onstage melee of players and audience that is as much about human experience as music

The Nature of Why is not so much a concert as a multi-discipline happening. To assess it is to relate a human experience rather than just an aesthetic appreciation of the new orchestral work by Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory which is at its heart. On the surface, it’s an hour-long piece in nine short movements, interspersed with old BBC recordings of the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman explaining how magnetism is unexplainable in layman’s terms.

A Previn treasury

AN ANDRE PREVIN TREASURY Selected recordings of the great musician

Selected recordings of the great musician, who has died just short of his 90th birthday

In a way, he was a second Bernstein.

Classical CDs Weekly: Couperin, Dutilleux, Rossini

CLASSICAL CDS WEEKLY Couperin orchestrated, symphonic Dutilleux and Rossini for piano

French orchestral music plus an Italian master, sinning in old age

 

Couperin ReyneCouperin: Les Nations Réunies & autres sonades La Simphonie du Marais/Hugo Reyne (Musiques à la Chabotterie)

Sophie Bevan, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - an Alpine blaze

★★★★★ SOPHIE BEVAN, PHILHARMONIA, ROUVALI, RFH An Alpine blaze

Generously flawed at first, the young Finn's conducting hit ever greater heights in Strauss

With eyes swivelled towards who'll take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor in 2021, two of the strongest possibilities are to be found within the orchestra's masthead of associates.

CBSO, Leleux, Birmingham Town Hall review - oboe extraordinaire

★★★★★ CBSO, LELEUX, TOWN HALL BIRMINGHAM Oboe extraordinaire

Who needs a baton when you've got an oboe? Charisma triumphs in Haydn and Bizet

There’s always a special atmosphere when the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra returns to Birmingham Town Hall, and it’s not just because of the building’s Greek Revival beauty: the gilded sunburst on the ceiling, or the towering, intricately painted mass of the organ, topped with its cameo of Queen Victoria.

Kremer, CBSO, Wellber, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - supercharged Dvořák

★★★★ KREMER, CBSO, WELLBER, SYMPHONY HALL BIRMINGHAM Supercharged Dvořák

Mirga's maternity cover opens the new season with a perfect storm

A shrewd orchestra maintains a strong subs bench. One of the major discoveries in Birmingham during the interregnum between Andris Nelsons’s premature departure and the appointment of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was the young Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber, whose taut, ferociously intelligent 2015 account of Brahms’s First Symphony prompted mutterings both inside and outside the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra that he might be The One, or at least capable of running The One very close indeed.

Like a baton out of hell: Conductors at the 2018 Proms

LIKE A BATON OUT OF HELL Conductors at the 2018 Proms

Chris Christodoulou snaps mostly men at work, but the women are coming

Discreetly poking his camera through one of the red curtains around the Albert Hall, chief Proms photographer Chris Christodoulou gets the action shots others would kill for.