"Manala, named after the Finnish word for the underworld, is dependably epic and anthemic, offering a nonstop barrage of the kind of metal that makes men...

"With the fiftieth anniversary of Sibelius' death falling this year, it is only natural that record companies should want to mark the occasion. BIS, though, has...

"The work that seems to be doing the international diplomacy is Mäntyjärvi's Four Shakespeare Songs of 1984, one of his earliest surviving works (he withdrew several...

"The hallmarks of Vänskä's conducting, we've long since learned, are a meticulous attention to detail - if it's in the score, you'll hear it in the...

"If you are sympathetic to large-scale Shostakovich (in works like the Eighth and Eleventh Symphonies), you will probably enjoy this CD as much as I did,...

"His handling of Rachmaninov's barnstorming First Sonata and the contrasting delicacies of Tchaikovsky's suite The Seasons (a movement a month) brings them up as fresh as...

"When I first picked up this CD, I thought that here was yet another Bach recital, the sort of run-of-the-mill release you have to expect to...

"It's rather odd, these days, thinking back to the days in the 1960s and '70s when the musical world was riven by the competing claims of...