Peter Quantrill

London

Contributor at Freelance

Writing and talking about music. Cricket tragic.

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Articles

Classical, May 2025

6 days ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Jonathan Aasgaard, BBC Scottish SO, John WilsonRichard Rodney Bennett: Concerto For Orchestra, Sonnets To Orpheus, DiversionsChandos CHSA5266 (SACD; downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)RR Bennett’s legacy needed addressing properly, after his death in 2012, and John Wilson is unquestionably the man for the job. Here by turns is Bennett the modernist, the post-Romantic and the entertainer, and Wilson has the measure of all three disparate idioms.
Classical, November 2024

1 week ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Březina, Briscein, Prague National Theatre/Jaroslav KyzlinkJanáček: The Excursions Of Mr BroučekSupraphon SU4339-2 (two CDs; downloads to 48kHz/24-bit resolution)Janáček’s loopiest and most neglected opera – Al Murray’s Pub Landlord goes to the Moon, in a nutshell – has long needed a modern Czech recording. Opera recordings often don’t work out this way, but here you get the best of both worlds.
Live, Video: Opera

1 week ago | bachtrack.com | David Karlin |Mark Pullinger |Peter Quantrill |Eleanor Knight

What to search forIn the first and last acts, ladies entered with a train still attached to a bolt of cloth, which was then cut to length by an attendant. Was this production brought to the stage in a great hurry, allowing no time for costume fittings? It's taken two years for Jack Furness' new production of Dvořák's greatest opera to reach the Garsington stage, but it is entirely worth the wait, with a breathtaking performance from Natalya Romaniw in the title role.
Blurred outlines

2 weeks ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Music and art can often make an attractive mix for cutting-edge cultural collectives, but the combination is also fraught with plenty of potential pitfalls, reckons Peter QuantrillComposers have often been inspired by artists, and vice versa. The Schoenberg anniversary celebrations serve to remind us that extraordinary individuals can even become accomplished in both fields.
Unhurried suspense in a very English Parsifal

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Peter Quantrill

Spoiler warnings are usually surplus to requirements in Parsifal. The staging which opened at Glyndebourne on Saturday, however, offers much to surprise, provoke and often enlighten anyone ready to fall under the spell of Wagner’s last music-drama. The most conventional aspect of Jetske Mijnssen’s production is its setting at the time of the opera’s premiere in 1882.
Diotima Quartet: Boulez

3 weeks ago | thestrad.com | Peter Quantrill

A contribution to Boulez’s centenary casts fresh ears on the master The Strad Issue: May 2025 Description: A contribution to Boulez’s centenary casts fresh ears on the master Musicians: Diotima Quartet Works: Boulez: Livre pour cordes Catalogue number: PENTATONE PTC5187360 In a letter to Stockhausen, the 20-something Boulez talked about ‘blowing up’ the string quartet, the way he had blown up sonata form in his previous work, the Second Piano Sonata.
The alpha and omega: Schumann Quartett’s complete Beethoven cycle in Tokyo

3 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Peter Quantrill

The best things in life are worth waiting for, and the members of the Schumann Quartett have been waiting almost all their lives for the adventure which awaits them in June, when they will perform their first complete cycle of Beethoven quartets, at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Having played together since childhood, the Schumann brothers officially formed the quartet in 2007, when the youngest of them, cellist Mark, was only 19 years old.
Classical, April 2025

1 month ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Thomas Kaufmann, Camerata Bern‘Exile’ – Panufnik, Schnittke, Wyschnegradsky, Ysaÿe, etc. Alpha ALPHA1110 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)Concept albums from PK and her Swiss partners never make for a comfortable listen. Schnittke’s First Cello Sonata, in neo-Baroque dress, trades in Mahlerian violence but keeps heavy irony at bay – unlike the Schubert dances used for one of the interludes.
The little man has his day: a nasty and brutish Die Walküre

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | Peter Quantrill

With The Ring, Wagner may have conceived one overarching drama of folly and redemption, but he wrote it in four instalments sufficient unto themselves. You would not need to have seen Das Rheingold, or perhaps even any Wagner at all, to be caught in the grip of Die Walküre as it was staged last night at the Royal Opera.
Edward Gardner takes the long view in Mahler's Eighth

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | Peter Quantrill

As Music Director of the London Philharmonic, Edward Gardner has not hitherto demonstrated any strong Mahlerian affinity, except notably in the case of Das Lied von der Erde. He reliably brings careful attention to the unity of text and music, and he gets the best out of choirs, and he did so again in the Eighth Symphony.