Pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Andrey Gugnin (piano) Hyperion CDA684712 83 mins This album of Russian ballet transcriptions sparkles like a glass bauble hanging amidst the fairy lights. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky wrote so colourful

National Symphony Orchestra/ Gianandrea Noseda NSO NSO0022 75:12 mins Mahler’s mad-cap Seventh is the toughest of his symphonies to conceptualise and to execute. Lacking any explicit programme, two of

Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini Alpha ALPHA1092 76:29 mins The most familiar of the symphonies here, if only because it has a nickname, is No. 55, whose ‘Schoolmaster’ title arises out of the

Georges Bizet is probably not the first name to come to mind when we think of French composers of piano music. Indeed, few of us would think of Bizet as a piano composer at all, such is the towering s

Víkingur Ólafsson (piano) DG 94867411 76 mins The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has recently been playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations around the world, and that led him to consider recording next

When a young Russian singer suggested to Tchaikovsky in 1877 that he compose an opera based on Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel-in-verse, he dismissed it as a “crazy” idea. “Then, durin