Path to the podium

There comes a point in life for most of us when we say, enough. We say goodbye to responsibilities that had begun to feel more like obligations, and we either seek new challenges, or find joy in what

It was the Viennese critic Hermann Bahr who likened Mahler’s arrival in a hotel lobby to a gust of wind forcing open a window, or water bursting from a pipe. There’s something similarly elemental abou

On Friday 18 July, at the hands of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sakari Oramo, the BBC Proms will be launched into life with Bliss’s Birthday Fanfare for Sir Henry Wood – two minu

Symphony No. 5; Swanwhite Suite etc Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon Ondine ODE 1468-2 77:16 mins One of the features of Finland’s impressive music educati

Marc-André Hamelin (piano) City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/ Mark Elder Hyperion CDA67143 The practical requirements of Busoni’s Piano Concerto – a chorus and enormous orchestra – on top of the f

Much about Henriëtte Bosmans’s life and music is remarkable. But one event stands out as emblematic of her character and strength. Our scene is Amsterdam in 1944, when the Nazis’ grip was on the Dutch