Big orchestral flourishes, memorable themes, expansive action set pieces… These were once a staple of film music, but these days you are perhaps even more likely to hear such things coming from your T

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

Steven C Smith Oxford University Press 978-0-197-68128-2 312pp (hb) £31.99 Theirs remains one of the most thrilling composer-director collaborations of all time, and while Bernard Herrmann and Alfred

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

Cappella Amsterdam; Noord Nederlands Orkest/ Daniel Reuss Pentatone PTC5187489 72:42 mins ‘He always was and still is ahead of everybody.’ The words of Stravinsky’s musical assistant and colleague, Ro

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw