The votes are in. Time to celebrate the best of the best. It’s a classical title showdown! Swapping gloves for glissandi and punches for prestos, players from around the globe square up for the hotly contested spot of World’s Best Symphony Orchestra

Revealed, the 250 greatest classical recordings, as selected for Gramophone by more than 30 leading musicians. Below, contributing editor and reviewer Rob Cowan muses on why artists and critics might choose differently

Handel started composing the score of Messiah on August 22, 1741, and, after 24 days of concentrated creativity, finished its complete draft on September 14. The autograph score as it stood in autumn 1741 contained various musical contents distinct from later and more familiar reworkings and substitute settings.

Aug 9, 2024 · Holst's The Planets: a guide to the greatest recordings Andrew Farach‑Colton Friday, August 9, 2024 Holst’s celestial suite has long been a showpiece for virtuoso orchestras and a sonic spectacular for hi‑fi buffs.

Schubert: the 50 greatest recordings Sunday, January 1, 2023 This list of albums is a great way to start exploring Schubert's music and includes many of the finest recordings from the last 100 years, featuring Sir Thomas Beecham, Alfred Brendel, Imogen Cooper, Gundula Janowitz, and …

‘A madness seizes me to pursue her, even though I might damage her wings.’ There lies the tragedy of Madama Butterfly, the geisha purchased as a temporary wife and callously abandoned by an American naval officer on tour of duty in Nagasaki at the turn of the 20th century.

When Furtwängler’s arch-rival Arturo Toscanini conducted the symphony in London in 1939, Neville Cardus suggested that the performance was too much an exercise in orchestral virtuosity, not least in the tragic first movement where the conducting rarely peered beneath the surface. This was not a popular view, either then or at the time of Toscanini’s last and finest Ninth, recorded live in ...

The 50 best Johann Sebastian Bach recordings Gramophone Sunday, January 1, 2023 50 of the finest JS Bach recordings available – complete with the original Gramophone reviews – featuring Glenn Gould, Angela Hewitt, Isabelle Faust, Murray Perahia and more

Claude Debussy's lyrical gift, idiosyncratic harmonies, colours and rhythms, his preference for suggestion rather than direct statement, resulted in a sound world that was quite different from those of Brahms, Wagner and Tchaikovsky, whose music ruled the roost while he was struggling to become accepted.But accepted he was, and many of his works are now central to the repertoire, as well as ...

Long-Thibaud Competition: a guide Jonathon Brown Wednesday, November 2, 2022 The last Long-Thibaud Competition saw a standoff between the jury and the audience, but with a history stretching back nearly 80 years it takes more than a scandal and a pandemic to knock it …