Peter Quantrill

Classical Companion
Joaquín Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
Peter Quantrill  |  Feb 03, 2022  |  0 comments
War and heartbreak colour the backdrop to this ever-popular sketch of Spain, but the best recordings are rooted in Baroque fantasy and formality, says Peter Quantrill

The Concierto de Aranjuez was composed in exile from one war and first performed in the shadow of another. Joaquín Rodrigo began writing it in 1939, having fled to Paris with his wife Victoria from the Spanish Civil War. The couple had met in the French capital a decade earlier, she a recent piano graduate from the Conservatoire and he a student of Paul Dukas at the École Normale. They married in Valencia in January 1933, against her father's wishes, and took a honeymoon in Aranjuez, a town south of Madrid dominated by its royal palace and gardens.

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Classical
Classical, January 2022
Peter Quantrill  |  Jan 31, 2022  |  0 comments
This month we review: Philharmonia Zürich, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Thélème, Jean-Christophe Groffe, ARC Ensemble and Alena Baeva, Persimfans.
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Classical
Classical, December 2021
Peter Quantrill  |  Dec 30, 2021  |  0 comments
This month we review: Ehnes Quartet, Sueye Park, Filippo Gorini and Michelle Deyoung, Et Al, Shanghai SO/Long Yu.
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Classical Companion
Bohemian Christmas Music: Beyond Good King Wenceslas
Peter Quantrill  |  Dec 28, 2021  |  0 comments
The Czech-speaking lands beyond Austria hold a rich tradition of festive music. Peter Quantrill explores Masses and carols and the special genre of pastorella

Precious few countries can boast a Christmas repertoire as rich and colourful as the Czech Republic. None of it, however, concerns the figure of Svatý Václav – St Wenceslas – who was posthumously ennobled from dukedom to kingship by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I following his assassination in 935AD.

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Classical Companion
Riccardo Muti: Conductor
Peter Quantrill  |  Dec 14, 2021  |  0 comments
Verdi holds the key to understanding the work of the old-school maestro, 80 this year. Peter Quantrill surveys a tumultuous career and finely honed legacy on record

I remember how my heart skipped a beat one hot afternoon in 1989 when, browsing through the stacks of a secondhand LP emporium in London, I pulled out Riccardo Muti's recording of Tchaikovsky's 'Little Russian' Symphony. It was a noisy Italian EMI pressing – 'La Voce del Padrone' – and there was a huge scratch in the middle of Romeo and Juliet on Side A.

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Classical
Classical, November 2021
Peter Quantrill  |  Nov 30, 2021  |  0 comments
This month we review: Bayerisches Staatsorch/Kirill Petrenko, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Johnston, Eiddwen Harrhy, BBC SO/Elgar Howarth and Orchestre de l'Opéra Royal/Andrés Gabetta.
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Classical Companion
Saint-Saëns: Symphony No 3 'Organ'
Peter Quantrill  |  Nov 09, 2021  |  0 comments
There's so much to enjoy – and a lot to go wrong – about recorded versions of a symphony facing in several different directions at once, says Peter Quantrill

Saint-Saëns had been organist of the Madeleine Church in Paris for almost 30 years when he wrote the last of his five symphonies – the first two unnumbered – in 1886. But the commission for it came from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and he conducted the premiere at St James's Hall in London.

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Classical Companion
Mozart: Così fan tutte
Peter Quantrill  |  Oct 12, 2021  |  0 comments
A silly farce or a social experiment gone wrong? There are no right answers – though a few wrong ones – to the riddle of this dramma giocoso, says Peter Quantrill

Giochiam', says Don Alfonso, to set in motion Mozart's final collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte: let's play a game. The nature of the game is a wager over feminine fidelity, laid with two soldiers to prove that, in the moral of the untranslatable title, 'all women are like that'.

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Classical Companion
Brazilian Composers: Beyond Villa-Lobos
Peter Quantrill  |  Sep 14, 2021  |  0 comments
You might want to think of the Bachianas Brasileiras like the mouth of the Amazon, says Peter Quantrill, because a flood of discoveries awaits the intrepid listener

European classical music arrived in the world's fifth largest country with the Jesuits, who brought with them the sacred polyphony of Palestrina and Victoria. Those young men who showed musical aptitude were trained not only as priests but as singers and composers.

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Classical Companion
Schubert 'Trout' Quintet
Peter Quantrill  |  Aug 10, 2021  |  0 comments
Music among friends, written by a young genius at one of the happiest times in his troubled life... Peter Quantrill explores the history on disc of a feel-good masterpiece

Growing up in a one-room apartment in an overcrowded district northwest of the Ring, pupil then assistant to his schoolteacher father, Schubert was Viennese born and bred, a city boy with even more reason than Beethoven to seek pleasure and solace in the surrounding countryside. Lacking time or resources for more refined pursuits, Schubert in his early 20s relaxed principally by drinking (coffee and alcohol, both to excess), smoking (likewise) and walking.

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