Featured Musician: A Maazel Celebration

The discs under consideration here.

Jeremy Lee writes

Comprehensive Review: Orff’s Carmina Burana

Jeremy Lee writes

Orff’s You-Know-What:  to many, all you have to do is mention the composer Orff to a casual classical music lover and immediately you will get one of two responses:  Carmina Burana, or O Fortuna.  In fact Carmina Burana (which is, to those of you who don’t know better,

Annie Fischer: Icon

Leonard Ip writes (translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Lee)

Annie Fischer (1914-1995) is one of the greatest pianists in the 20^th century, but despite this she’s generally not what you’d call famous. I don’t understand why, because one just needs to have a short listen to her recordings to realize that her performances are as great as any of the more famous pianists. Some say

Ein Deutsches Requiem: A comprehensive review

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

The Gentleman’s Mahler: Barbirolli’s Mahler 5

Jeremy Lee writes

Mahler’s 5th is arguably the composer’s most accessible work, and at any rate it’s certainly the most popular if only because the Adagietto featured in the film Death in Venice.  As discerning Mahlerians would already know, the current market is awash with great Mahler 5s that take