Latest News: Classical, Composer Guides
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Composer Guides,
Bernard Herrmann 26th June 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2024A 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 2023An 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 2023A 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 2023A 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 2022As 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 2022Our 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 2018On 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,
Sibelius Presto's founder Maurice Millward chooses his favourite recordings.
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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.