Berlin Philharmonic/Kirill Petrenko Berliner Philharmoniker BPHR250561 56 mins Kirill Petrenko’s early career stint at the Meiningen Court Theatre, a place indelibly associated with Brahms, laid the f

In December 1838, a few days after Berlioz had conducted a concert of his own works that included Harold in Italy, a four-movement ‘symphony with principal viola’, the composer found that his bank bal

Music is a serious business. Whether it’s love, death, heartbreak, loneliness, power, conflict, destruction, sin, faith, hope, despair… you name it, every weighty subject and state of mind has been ta

Had Robin Holloway published Music’s Odyssey—described by its author as “an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music”—30 years ago, he might well have got away with it. By day

6.30-9am Sunday Breakfast 9am-12pm Sunday Morning 12-1.30pm Private Passions 1.30-3pm Music Map 3-4pm Choral Evensong 4-5pm Jazz Record Requests 5-6pm The Early Music Show 6-7.15pm Words and Music CHO

Inspired by the Walter Scott novel, Berlioz’s Rob Roy of 1831 celebrates the Jacobite outlaw in a 15-minute overture for orchestra. Though he liked the main melody enough to re-use it in Harold in Ita