The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Faust emerges from the shadows

10th November 2021

For more than 200 years composers have been fascinated by the story of Faust, a scholar who, unsatisfied with life, bargains away his soul to the Devil in return for unlimited knowledge and pleasures. The consequences of this pact, for Faust, his loved ones and, most crucially, his soul, have proved endlessly fascinating for artists and philosophers alike, and of course the subject has very special resonances for any individual whose life is focussed on the creative process. The Faust of German legend goes back to the Middle... read more

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Mozart’s ‘Other’ Operas

2nd November 2021

More than two centuries after his death in December 1791, Mozart’s operas are steadfast centrepieces of the operatic repertoire, from the three Da Ponte operas (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte) to the Singspiels Die Zauberflöte and Die Entführung and the two mature opera serie, Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito. All these works – composed in little more than the last decade of his life – have been fortunate on discs, from the pioneering Glyndebourne recordings under Fritz Busch and Vittorio Gui, to later... read more

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Farewell to Two Musical Greats

26th October 2021

Last week the world of classical music world lost two of the most outstanding artists of the past 50 years and more.

The greatly respected Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink passed away on 21 October at the great age of 92, just two years after stepping down from the podium. His last concerts, at the head of the Vienna Philharmonic in London and Lucerne, were of music by Beethoven and Bruckner, two composers with whom he had become closely identified over the course of his long career. Born in Amsterdam on 4 March 1929,... read more

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Early Music round-up: Some new and recent releases

19th October 2021

With all but small-scale musical activities largely suspended until recently over the last year-and-a-half, new recordings have witnessed bumper crops of solo recitals and chamber music, but another apparent beneficiary has been early music. Anything from the early Baroque and still earlier eras is often unexplored territory for many listeners, but with the rise in performance standards of the past few decades and the huge expansion of repertoire (not to mention the emergence of many independent labels willing to take... read more

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Keeping the Politics out of it? Part 3: Music and Politics in the 20th Century and Beyond

14th October 2021

As we’ve already seen in previous instalments of this short series, music and social power structures have always been closely connected, whether it be the relationship between musicians and the church or court, or the dominant ideologies of nationalism in the 19th century. Lavish masses and motets redounded to the glory of God or to God’s sacred and secular representatives, while patriotic-style choruses, tone-poems and even art song were used (often co-opted in retrospect) to bolster ideas of national identity, cohesion,... read more

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