The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

In memoriam: Libor Pešek (1933–2022)

26th October 2022

The death this week at the age of 89 of the Czech conductor Libor Pešek has been mourned both in his homeland and abroad, particularly in Liverpool, where he was music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic from 1987 to 1998. Those years spanned the Fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the ‘Iron Curtain’, as well as the Czechoslovak ‘Velvet Revolution’. Although the Czech Philharmonic already had a history of touring under its long-term chief conductor Václav Neumann, changing political circumstances meant that... read more

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Works in Focus: Hans Rott's Symphony in E major

19th October 2022

At the time of the centenary of his death, the composer Hans Rott (1858-1884) was virtually unknown to all but a few specialists in the music of Bruckner and Mahler. He had studied organ and composition with the former as a gifted but ill-fated student at the Vienna Conservatory, where the latter was not only a contemporary but a room-mate. His surviving output – encompassing songs, chamber music and several orchestral pieces – was saved for posterity after his tragically early death (from tuberculosis, following a... read more

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Works in Focus: Debussy’s ‘Jeux’

12th October 2022

In the great succession of major works premiered in the early years of Diaghilev’s Ballets russes – The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), Daphnis et Chloé (1912), The Rite of Spring (1913), Le Rossignol (1914) – Debussy’s Jeux (1913) is easily overlooked. At a little over a quarter of an hour in length, and with a far less exotic, almost prosaic plot (a nocturnal ménage à trois set in a tennis park), at a superficial level it’s a far less engaging work for the audience. It was premiered on 15 May 1913 at Paris’s Théâtre des... read more

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The 2022 Gramophone Awards

5th October 2022

Since their launch in 1977, the annual awards organised by Gramophone magazine have come to be regarded as the foremost in the classical recording business. By comparison, America’s Grammys cover a much wider spectrum of genres (from pop and rock to spoken word) while being geographically limited to the US music industry, while the BBC Music Magazine awards are relative newcomers. Certainly, in the English-speaking classical music world, the Gramophone Awards remain the leaders, and each year the shortlists and eventual... read more

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New and recent Schubert recordings

29th September 2022

The late theatre director Peter Brook once wrote that ‘Shakespeare’s plays are like planets. In an incessant movement, they approach us for a moment, then move away swirling in their orbit’. Might Schubert’s music perhaps occupy a similar sphere? The mixture of ardent lyricism and aching, sometimes gaunt introspection, of Biedermeier charm and proto-Romantic emotional turmoil, is a particularly powerful feature of his works. It makes him difficult to pigeonhole as either a Classical or Romantic composer; in this respect... read more

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