Mark Seow

1 month ago | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Seow

Mark Seow ‘After death, if there is something, I hope for the possibility to visit any moment of humanity for eternity.’ I didn’t expect my conversation with French conductor Raphaël Pichon to touch on the eschatological, but if any piece of music in the Western canon was going to make us ponder the afterlife, of course it was going to be Bach’s B Minor Mass.

Jan 2, 2025 | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Seow

Mark Seow ‘Spring came along this last year, and it was the worst spring I’ve ever had in my life. And I’m not talking about anything else except the weather,’ says Sir Michael Morpurgo. He’s the voice of my literary childhood, and interviewing him is daunting enough; now I can’t even channel our shared Britishness by calling on the weather as a conversation card. So I try my luck with music.

Jun 14, 2024 | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Seow

Mark Seow Thanks for exploring the Gramophone website.

Apr 4, 2024 | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Seow

In the March edition of Gramophone, I reviewed Théotime Langlois de Swarte’s latest recording with Harmonia Mundi, Concerti per una vita. Featuring eight world premiere recordings, including an early version of Vivaldi’s Summer, Langlois de Swarte has in a sense completed a project that begun in 1924 – the year in which a work by Vivaldi was first recorded. Now all of Vivaldi’s extant instrumental music has been committed to disc. Vivaldi’s name first crops up in Gramophone’s pages in May 1926.

Aug 14, 2023 | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Seow

Mark Seow A recent Beats by Dre campaign video for its wireless headphones features LeBron James playing a game of backyard basketball with his teenage son, LeBron Jnr. They trade shots back and forth: what the 6ft 9in Snr has over his son in height, Jnr makes up for in swaggy cockiness. The music of the advert swaps between the different tracks playing in their ears. Why is this important? Because LeBron Snr is listening to Winter from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.