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

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

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

● AS WE ALL KNOW, OPERA IS THE ...

Le Concert des Nations; La Capella Nacional de Catalunya/Jordi Savall Alia Vox AVSA9965 66:27 mins Jordi Savall’s recording of Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor is not just another attempt to tidy up an

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