Peter Quantrill

Peter Quantrill  |  Sep 12, 2024  |  0 comments
With programme notes now written and translated by chatbots, and record covers created by image generators, can the first classical AI recording be far behind? Peter Quantrill thinks not

It was the word homotonal that caught my eye. Surely no one writes like that in 2024, I wondered to myself. I read on. ‘Similar to Plato’s ideas of the imprint of moral virtues onto the human soul through music…’ – eh? Bear in mind I was reading a booklet note to accompany a new album of Mozart’s piano sonatas. I flipped the page to look for the author’s credit. No name given.

Peter Quantrill  |  Sep 09, 2024  |  0 comments
This month we review: Christina Landshamer, Akademie für das alte Musik Berlin/BERNHARD Forck, Yomiuri Nippon SO/Skrowaczewski, Asmik Grigorian, and Christophe Rousset
Peter Quantrill  |  Aug 30, 2024  |  0 comments
Centuries ahead of his time, Kraus was the master of Scandi noir, says Peter Quantrill, in a catalogue of symphonies and theatre pieces crying out for wider recognition

The title is neither original, nor strictly accurate. Born five months after Mozart in June 1756, Kraus grew up in the German town of Buchen im Odenwald. His father was a clerk who (not unreasonably) regarded music as an unstable profession and pressed his son into a law degree. The plan failed, and by the age of 20 Kraus had composed pieces for the church including a Te Deum, a Requiem and a Passion oratorio [see Essential Recordings, opposite].

Peter Quantrill  |  Aug 07, 2024  |  0 comments
They’re everywhere, says Peter Quantrill, but let’s dispel dyspeptic indignation and instead see young and gifted conductors as a sign of hope when it comes to the future of classical music. Tarmo Peltokoski is among the most youthful and gifted products of Jorma Panula’s conducting class at the Helsinki Conservatoire in Finland

As a follower of cricket and football, I got used years ago to seeing professionals at the top of their game (sorry), who had been born within the current millennium. But conductors? DG has lately been making a song and dance about their latest signing, Tarmo Peltokoski. Born in April 2000, he is now principal guest conductor of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and DG has recorded and filmed them together in a trio of Mozart’s mature symphonies.

Peter Quantrill  |  Jul 28, 2024  |  0 comments
This month we review: Majeski, O’Neill, Dalayman, LSO/Rattle, Leonskaja, Lucerne SO/Sanderling, Magnificat/Philip Cave, BBC Concert Orch/Rebecca Miller
Peter Quantrill  |  Jul 28, 2024  |  0 comments
A simple Quaker hymn is the key to a classic mid-century ballet, says Peter Quantrill, as he surveys recordings of both the chamber original and the orchestral suite.

The Gift To Be Simple’, an old Shaker tune quoted and developed throughout Appalachian Spring, could be the motto for a major part of Copland’s work. Copland could write hard-edged pieces with the best of them, and did so especially at the beginning and end of his career with works such as the Vitebsk piano trio of 1928 and the magnificent orchestral Inscape (1967). By contrast, his famous scores of the 1930s and ’40s develop an aesthetic of simplicity and accessibility exemplified by Appalachian Spring, which he composed for the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.

Peter Quantrill  |  May 03, 2024  |  0 comments
The ideal gateway symphony to Bruckner – or an elusive work of secrets and memories? Peter Quantrill slaughters a herd of sacred cows in his survey of the Seventh on record

Let's brush aside the old (but stubborn) complaint that Bruckner composed the same symphony nine times over. For one thing, he wrote 11 symphonies, only the first of which was intended purely as an exercise, and brought the last (numbered as the Ninth) tantalisingly close to completion. For another, each has its own personality, which is shaped by continual experimentation, his time of life, and the confidence and material accumulated by hard graft. Each successive symphony looks back on its predecessors and sets out on a different path.

Peter Quantrill  |  Apr 29, 2024  |  0 comments
This month we review: BBC Nat Orch Wales/Jonathan Berman, Thomas Guthrie, Barokksolistene, Molly Netter, Kate Maroney, Gene Stenger, Dashon Burton, et al and Asasello-Quartett.
Peter Quantrill,  |  Apr 25, 2024  |  0 comments
This month we review and test releases from: Carducci Quartet, Ross Pederson, Gustaf Ljunggren/Emil De Waal, Mikyung Sung and Barre Phillips.
Peter Quantrill  |  Apr 02, 2024  |  0 comments
It's both impossible and essential to put the composer's life-story to one side when listening to this music of love and loss, and life and death, says Peter Quantrill

Denis Stevens was a British musicologist who, in the early 1960s, began persuading people to listen to Gesualdo's music rather than marvel at the composer with horrified fascination. One night, after rehearsing the Sixth Book of Madrigals, he was so stunned that on his way home he caught the right train going in the wrong direction.

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