Latest News: Classical, Composer Guides
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Composer Guides,
Bernard Herrmann 26th June 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the American composer and conductor, best known for his impressive roster of enormously successful film scores.
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Composer Guides,
Charles-François Gounod 20th June 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the French Romantic composer, known for his operas, sacred music and songs.
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Composer Guides,
Ethel Smyth 22nd May 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the late Romantic composer, known for her groundbreaking operas, her solo songs, and her fearless involvement in the suffragette movement.
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Composer Guides,
Arthur Sullivan 15th May 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the great Victorian composer - best known for his light operas written in collaboration with William Schwenck Gilbert and for his hymn-tunes.
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Composer Guides,
Louis Spohr 16th April 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the early Romantic violin innovator - composer of eighteen violin concertos, thirty-six string quartets and more, and developer of two invaluable musical inventions: the chinrest and the rehearsal mark.
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Composer Guides,
Charles Villiers Stanford 28th March 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the Anglo-Irish composer - known particularly for his sacred choral music but also a prodigious composer of chamber and orchestral works, songs, part-songs and more.
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Composer Guides,
Hugo Wolf 13th March 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the arch-Romantic Lieder composer - best known for his intense, harmonically adventurous Mörike-Lieder, Italienisches Liederbuch and Spanisches Liederbuch.
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Composer Guides,
Bedřich Smetana 2nd March 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the great Czech Romantic composer - best known for his stirring pictorial tone poem Má vlast and opera The Bartered Bride.
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Composer Guides,
Carl Friedrich Abel 11th January 2024
A selection of some of the best recordings of music by perhaps the last of the great viola da gamba players, in a slightly belated celebration of the 300th anniversary of his birth.
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Composer Guides,
Peter Maxwell Davies: A postcard from Hoy, and a farewell to Stromness 9th September 2023
An account of a miniature Presto Pilgrimage over the summer holiday, in search of the former home of Peter Maxwell Davies in the Orkney Islands.
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Composer Guides,
William Byrd 4th July 2023
A selection of some of the best recent recordings of music by the giant of English early music, for the 400th anniversary of his death.
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Composer Guides,
Sergei Rachmaninoff Russian composer 1st April 2023
A selection of some of the finest recent recordings of the Russian colossus, to mark his 150th anniversary.
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Composer Guides,
Valentyn Sylvestrov 29th September 2022
As the Ukrainian composer turns 85, David listens to some of the greatest recordings of his music - by turns introverted and reflective, rapturously spiritual, and politically impassioned.
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Composer Guides,
Weber’s Bassoon Concerto turns 200! 3rd August 2022
Our in-house Instrument Repairer Alex Preston (also a freelance woodwind player) celebrates 'one of the two titans' of the bassoon concerto repertoire, and selects some favourite recordings.
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Composer Guides,
Leonard Bernstein 25th August 2018
On the composer's 100th birthday, Chris recommends some favourite recordings of his key works across all genres, from the ever-popular West Side Story to comparative rarities like Trouble in Tahiti and the song-cycles.
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Composer Guides,
Edvard Grieg
David picks some of the best recordings of the works of the Norwegian Romantic nationalist, Edvard Grieg.
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Composer Guides,
Camille Saint-Saëns 
James explores the music of French composer Camille Saint-Saëns and chooses some of his favourite recordings.
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Composer Guides,
Jacques Offenbach 
Katherine explores beyond the Barcarolle and the Can-Can to uncover some neglected gems…
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Composer Guides,
César Franck
David picks out some of the finest recordings of Belgian organist-composer César Franck.
