Record Review Podcast

Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony with Gillian Moore Olivier Messiaen's only symphony was written for an orchestra of enormous forces. The title comes from two Sanskrit words. "Lîla" means play in the sense of the divine action upon the cosmos. It also means love. "Turanga" is the time that runs, like a galloping horse and that flows, like sand in an hourglass; it's both movement and rhythm. The mea...

Mozart's 'Dissonance' Quartet is the last of a set of six famously dedicated by Mozart to his 'very dear friend' Joseph Haydn. Soon after he arrived in Vienna in 1781, Mozart came to know Haydn's recently published Op. 33 set of innovatory string quartets which, said Haydn, had been composed in ‘a new and special way'. It was no idle boast. Not only more concentrated and sophisticated than any pre...

Beethoven's 23rd piano sonata is stormy and intense, so earned the nickname "Appassionata" or "Passionate". Pianist Iain Burnside has been listening to a wide range of recordings, old and new, to pick the ultimate version to buy, download or stream.

Purcell's magnum opus was written as a series of masques to be performed at the end of the acts of a special version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Arguably the greatest British composer before the 20th century, Purcell left us a tantalizing array of music for use in theatrical productions, which shows what an unsurpassed gift he had for matchings words and mood with music. Apart from...

Yshani Perinpanayagam chooses her favourite recording of Debussy's Images for Orchestra. Composed between 1906 and 1912, Images is Debussy’s final concert work for orchestra. Over its three sections it abundantly displays his customary sophistication and flair for orchestral sonorities and for painting pictures in sound. The first and last parts of the triptych are folk-inflected: the enigmatic Gi...

Emily MacGregor chooses her favourite recording of Shostakovich's String Quartet No 8 in C minor. Written at white heat in just three days, Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet is also his most personal - indeed, it opens with a form of the composer's own initials. Emily has been listening to recordings from throughout the quartet's life - from its first performers to young ensembles of the presen...

Ben Gernon chooses his favourite recording of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2. This concerto is full of glorious melodies and deserves a place in everyone's collection. Prokofiev was on a concert tour when he wrote the piece and later wrote, "the number of places in which I wrote the Concerto shows the kind of nomadic concert tour life I led then. The main theme of the 1st movement was written in...

Edward Seckerson chooses his favourite recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in A minor. More often than not, Mahler's symphonies end positively, whether in triumph, exaltation, joyful exuberance, quiet bliss, or resignation and acceptance. But the Sixth is unique in its tragic, minor-key conclusion and this Symphony as a whole is among his darkest music. Intriguingly, he wrote it during one of the...

Lucy Parham chooses her favourite recording of Rachmaninov's 24 piano preludes. Rachmaninov's 24 piano preludes in all the 24 major and minor keys are a glorious treasure trove of different pianistic styles from lyrical to barn-storming. He wrote and published them at different times, and didn't regard them as a unified set. Unlike the keyboard preludes of Bach and Chopin they are not organized ac...

Tom Service chooses his favourite recording of Beethoven's Symphony No 9 in D minor. Beethoven's final complete symphony is one of the summits of classical music. The famous final movement features four vocal soloists and a chorus in a setting of the "Ode to Joy" by Friedrich Schiller. Many of the world's greatest conductors and orchestras have tackled this musical Everest including Furtwangler, T...

Jeremy Sams chooses his favourite recording of Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor. Ravel was living in the Basque country not far from the town where he was born when completed his Piano Trio in 1914, just after the outbreak of World War I, far away from the front line. But there are no grim premonitions in this music and its lush harmonic sound world, full of Basque dance patterns and playful...

Natasha Loges chooses her favourite recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 ('Elvira Madigan'). Perhaps the only piece of music to be named after a Swedish slack line dancer, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 gained its soubriquet after its remarkable slow movement was used as part of the soundtrack to the 1967 film Elvira Madigan. But circus acts or no, this concerto from 1785...

William Mival chooses his favourite recording of Richard Strauss's symphonic poem Don Juan. In Strauss's Don Juan, the infamous libertine bursts onto the stage with a dazzling flourish. The following 16 minutes are no less compelling, the irresistible, swaggering Don superbly evoked through sumptuous and virtuosic orchestration, including tender violin and oboe solos and heroic, triumphant horn ca...

Katy Hamilton with her pick of recordings of the last and greatest of Edvard Grieg's three violin sonatas, written when the composer was living in Troldhaugen in 1886-7.

Richard Wigmore chooses his favourite recording of Joseph Haydn's Harmoniemesse in B flat. In 1802, when Haydn completed the Harmoniemesse (having, as he put it, "toiled wearily and laboriously"), the 70-year-old was acknowledged as Europe's greatest living composer. The mass setting, Haydn's last major completed work, never gained the same popularity as his two late oratorios The Creation and The...

The pianist Joanna MacGregor's pick of the ultimate recording of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in B flat minor, Op. 23 Tchaikovsky's famous piano concerto is one of the most popular concertos in the repertoire - full of swaggering great tunes and still, soulful melodies. And many of the piano titans of the past and present have recorded it. Joanna will cut a swathe through the available recor...

Elin Manahan-Thomas's chooses her favourite recording of Schumann's song-cycle Myrthen. The 26 songs that Schumann published under the title Myrthen (Myrtles) were all composed in 1840, the year in which great songs flowed out of him in a great flood of inspiration. He gave a beautifully bound edition of the Myrthen songs to his bride Clara on the eve of their wedding that year. This cycle contain...

Simon Heighes with his pick of recordings of Mozart's sparkling and tuneful Symphony no.31 in D, nicknamed the "Paris" Symphony.

Continuing Radio 3's Vaughan Williams Today season, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Kate Kennedy chooses her favourite recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. In Vaughan Williams' modal and folk music-inflected The Lark Ascending a solo violin takes flight above the orchestra evoking for many the very essence of an idealised English countryside. But this pop...

Bach's St Matthew Passion is one of the most profound and popular choral works with many diverse interpretations of record to choose from, and Joseph McHardy joins Andrew McGregor to recommend his favourite.

Roger Parker recommends a recording of Brahms Double Concerto in A minor. The Double Concerto was Brahms' last orchestral work, composed in 1887. It was written partly as a gesture of reconciliation towards his friend the violinist, Joachim. The old friends had fallen out over Joachim's divorce. The concerto has been praised for its "vast and sweeping humour". It needs two brilliant and well match...

Nigel Simeone with his pick of recordings of Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus. Strauss's sparkling operetta premiered in 1874 and has been delighting audiences and listeners ever since. It has been fortunate on record, and Nigel discusses with Andrew a huge range of performances and styles.

Allyson Devenish chooses her favourite recording of Schubert's Piano Trio No 1 in B flat, D.898 Schubert began composing this masterpiece in 1827, the year before his death, at the same time as working on his famous song cycle Die Winterreise. It was a period in his life of illness and melancholy. But this work is brimming with lyricism and life force. Robert Schumann said of it: “One glance at Sc...

Tom Service chooses his favourite recording of William Walton's Symphony No 1 in B flat minor. In 1932, with the spectacular success of Belshazzar's Feast behind him, Walton began his Symphony No 1. But, always a slow worker, the symphony took him two painful years to complete – painful because what lay behind most of the Symphony was the emotional upheaval that came with the end of a relationship...

Elin Manahan Thomas compares recordings of Beethoven's Missa solemnis and chooses her favourite. Beethoven's setting of the Solemn Mass is one of the monuments of choral music. Written between 1819 and 1823, it is widely thought of as one of Beethoven's towering achievements. It was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf of Austria, one of Beethoven's most generous patrons as well as pupil and friend. The c...