Kit armstrong

Norman Lebrecht on Music HE WORKED SO ...

When you’re speaking to someone devastatingly fluent in four tongues (Italian, German, French and English) the subject of language naturally leads to some curiosity. Especially from a somewhat green-e

Itzhak Perlman has just turned 80, but it’s a milestone this warm and wonderful violin virtuoso is in no rush to acknowledge. ‘Don’t hurry me,’ he jokes when I wish him an early Happy Birthday during

It remains a mystery: not why Alfred Brendel took a tortoise on a lead to a concert at the Musikverein in Vienna in the 1950s – although that is a fact of his life that ought to be better known – but

Sonatas Nos 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6; Sonata violino solo representativa in A major Rachel Podger (violin); Brecon Baroque Channel Classics CCS48525 70:08 mins No Arts Council funding was available to rescue

The year was 1987. The Soviet Union, under leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was approaching its final chapters. As if to catch the dying embers of the USSR, recently graduated pianist James Kirby left his li