The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Music and Nationality: The Finnish Question - An Introduction

20th September 2023

Can music express nationality? Not for the first time this question arose recently, when listening to a collection of ‘Overtures from Finland’ performed by the Oulu Sinfonia under the ever-enterprising Rumon Gamba (Chandos). For most listeners, Finnish music begins and ends with one figure: Jean Sibelius. Yet, even setting aside the many excellent contemporary composers who emerged since the post-war period – among them, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Kaija Saariaho, Kalevi Aho and Magnus Lindberg – Finland has never been short of... read more

read more

Early Music Round-Up: Recent and Forthcoming Releases

13th September 2023

Although many of the lessons of the historically-informed performance (HIP) movement have been eagerly adopted by mainstream performers (witness the stylistic shift in new recordings of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms symphonies over the last couple of decades), the wider ‘Early Music’ world still thrives on a mixture of familiar repertoire, neglected works and new discoveries. The regular supply of new recordings of exceptional quality shows no signs of drying up, giving the lie to the frequently proclaimed death of recorded... read more

read more

Book Review – Quartet: Ethel, Rebecca, Dorothy & Doreen

6th September 2023

Oxford-based academic and author Leah Broad has certainly caught the mood of the moment. Released with much pre-publicity in March this year, her impressively weighty and dazzlingly written debut book, Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World (Faber), has become a best-seller in the classical world. Consistently engaging, and aimed at the general rather than specialist reader, it traces the lives, careers, strengths, flaws and times of four English composers who battled against prejudice to carve out very different... read more

read more

Karajan in Lucerne

30th August 2023

Even in an age when many recordings are taken in superb sound from live performances (often several performances combined, plus ‘patching’ sessions), it can be enormously refreshing to hear performances by famous names caught truly ‘live’ and ‘on the wing’. Archive radio and in-house recordings have seen a welcome boom in recent years, and although sound and performance quality sometimes bring disappointments, the light shone by archival material on both well-known and more obscure figures is usually worth it. This is... read more

read more

In Praise of Zelenka

23rd August 2023

Of the many fine Czech musicians of the Baroque era, one of the most outstanding yet still underappreciated is the composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745). This will come as a surprise to the many existing converts to his uniquely distinctive soundworld. Yet although his music has experienced a significant revival since the 1970s, the fact is that the profile of this marvellous musician - admired during his lifetime by such figures as Telemann and J.S. Bach - is still not quite at the level it merits. At its best -... read more

read more