Contents – November 2010

‘Gerald Finley gives a masterly account of Iago, his voice seemingly transfigured by the Italian music and language’

John Steane on the Canadian bass-baritone’s account in the LSO’s Otello under Sir Colin Davis, reviewed on page 101

Letters Heifetz’s perilous stand for Strauss

10

editor’s choice Pierre Boulez’s riveting Szymanowski; Arabella Steinbacher plays Bartók; a stellar new version of Holst’s The Planets; a Brahms journey from Sir John Eliot Gardiner

14

S o u n d b i t e S

i / D e c c a i a n i c c a g l

P

,

c l a r k e c a n e t t y i m s

:

p h o t o g r a p h y

For the record Updates from the 2010 Gramophone Awards; Simone Kermes on her trip into unknown

Baroque; three conducting appointments

16

a conversation with…

…guitarist Xuefei Yang

21

diary

Leading British violinist Tasmin Little on returning to the daunting span of Elgar’s Violin Concerto for her new recording

23

one towatch Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, 23,

has just recorded her first disc, of Liszt

25

richard eyre The art of reviving your own productions

27

PhiLiP Kennicott How can anybody not love Haydn?

28

recordings on triaL Solomon’s classic recording of Beethoven’s

Moonlight Sonata is in the dock, as two

Gramophone critics dispute the case

30

www.gramophone.co.uk

F e At u R e S

geraLd FinLey’s big move Singing Verdi’s Iago is the first step in what the great Canadian bass-baritone sees as a leap of faith in his career. It’s a high-risk strategy but, he tells James Inverne, he’s ready for “the full sing”

36

tRIBUTE TO JOAN SUTHERLAND They called her “La Stupenda” – and for very good reasons. Marilyn Horne, Zubin Mehta, Gwynne Howell, John Steane and Edward Greenfield remember the woman who took the opera world by storm

42

the gramoPhone coLLection Richard Fairman on the finest, funniest recordings of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore

46

e n C o R e musicaL journeys The unveiling of a region-wide festival in East Lothian; musical explorations in Dubrovnik with Julian Rachlin; Rautavaara’s new opera

113

PicK oF the musicaL month Alan Gilbert conducts the NYPO in

Mendelssohn’s Elijah

117

audio and visuaL Naim’s new high-end player; how to pipe computer content through your hi-fi

120

mymusic Journalist Matthew Parris delights in

Strauss’s reworking of Mozart

138

Gerald Finley, one of the most intense of stage performers, is ready to take a leap of faith 36

Saluting Sutherland (here pictured in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, at La Scala) 42

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