Jeremy Lee writes
Lorin Maazel died on July 13, 2014, and upon his death the musical world mourned at the loss of one of the few remaining “conducting firebrands”: an extremely gifted and technically secure conductor whose musicality and personality often polarized listeners, especially during his later years. A frustratingly variable conductor at times, when he was on he could deliver Continue reading
Breaking news: It has been announced yesterday that Valery Gergiev will succeed the incumbent Lorin Maazel in 2015 as the new music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. Gergiev’s initial contract with the MPhil will extend to 2020. Further details can be viewed here.
We thought that this was Continue reading
Jeremy Lee writes
After a brief hiatus, here’s Top Ear’s second comprehensive, this time on 12 different recordings of Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, purely a labour of love of Brahms’ music.
Just a few of the recordings reviewed here
The work, whose conception and progress was apparently spurred by the notion of Brahms’ mother’s eminent death as well as a work by Schumann of a similar title, remains to this day one of his finest achievements and testimony of his study in counterpoint, as well as one of the Continue reading
Jeremy Lee writes
Celibidache, that mystical musical figure, a Zen Buddhist who believed in the transcendental side of music, that “the more complex the music, the slower the tempo”; the ex-principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic who rejected the recording process–despite most of his concert activity Continue reading
Top Ear 