Christopher Breunig

Christopher Breunig  |  Jun 02, 2020  |  0 comments
This month we review: Vaughan Williams, JS Bach/Bartók, Bizet-Shchedrin/Respighi and Escales.
Christopher Breunig  |  May 27, 2020  |  0 comments
Warner Classics and Deutsche Grammophon are early to the party, with huge boxed CD editions. Christopher Breunig suggests more affordable library must-haves

In 1970, Deutsche Grammophon marked the bicentenary of the birth of Beethoven with LP box sets, part reissue partly new recordings, to provide the first comprehensive Edition. (Philips did much the same for Mozart but marking 200 years after he had died – this time all CDs.)

Christopher Breunig  |  May 26, 2020  |  Published: Sep 01, 1989  |  0 comments
hfnvintageAfter Mozart, Debussy. But what of the pianists' long term plans? A psychology of recording by Christopher Breunig

Afavourable acoustic, and music Mitsuko Uchida has been playing since she was 13 years old – but even at The Maltings, Snape, there were unforeseen snags when it came to recording Debussy's 12 Études.

Christopher Breunig  |  May 18, 2020  |  0 comments
This month we review: Royal Fireworks, Beethoven, Ravel and Karl Münchinger
Christopher Breunig  |  May 13, 2020  |  0 comments
The Hungarian boy who wanted to play football became a good pianist and acclaimed opera and orchestral conductor. Christopher Breunig on a musical dynamo

Certainly one of the most extraordinary film clips of a conductor in action that you will ever see is Georg Solti recording Wagner in the Vienna Sofiensaal [YouTube]. Fuzzy black and white the excerpts may be, but the physical energy is almost shocking – you could have driven a ten ton truck into this man but it wouldn't have stopped him!

Christopher Breunig  |  May 06, 2020  |  0 comments
This month we review: Complices, Beethoven, Mussorgsky/Khachaturian and Schubert.
Christopher Breunig  |  Apr 17, 2020  |  0 comments
Training complete, he followed in his father's footsteps working with the Leningrad Philharmonic but his final years were in Munich. Christopher Breunig tells the story

When Herbert von Karajan took the Berlin Philharmonic to Moscow and Leningrad in 1969 he also gave a conducting masterclass for 12 students, where he was impressed most by the young Latvian Mariss Jansons, then 26. Jansons sat in on rehearsals where he said the orchestra 'played at two-hundred per cent capacity. It was unbelievable'. (Melodiya briefly issued on CD the Shostakovich Tenth from the Karajan concert.)

Christopher Breunig  |  Apr 07, 2020  |  0 comments
This month we review: Prokofiev/Rachmaninov, Falla, Prism I, and R Strauss.
Christopher Breunig  |  Mar 25, 2020  |  0 comments
This month we review: Korngold, Beethoven/Sibelius, Debussy/Duruflé and Tchaikovsky.
Christopher Breunig  |  Mar 19, 2020  |  0 comments
Composed when he was influenced by the Knaben Wunderhorn collected folk poems it stands unique in form and aspiration. Christopher Breunig offers an introduction

As this issue of HFN is likely to reach you during the festive period, why not a piece that starts with sleigh-bells? No, not Leroy Anderson, but Mahler's fourth symphony, written in 1899-1900, and first performed in Munich in November 1901. The UK premiere came just a few years later in a 1905 Prom concert with Sir Henry Wood.

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