Gramophone

Gramophone has been the world’s leading authority on classical music since 1923. With 13 issues a year every edition will enrich your classical music knowledge with in-depth interviews and features about composers past and present, plus established and new artists from across the globe. Each issue includes over 100 reviews of the latest CDs, downloads, DVDs and books all written by our globally acclaimed panel of expert critics. Gramophone is the magazine for the classical collector, as well for the enthusiast starting a voyage of discovery. 

The trial issue features an in-depth retrospective on Schubert’s Winterreise, with input from some of the leading performers of the song cycle, including Jonas Kauffman, Ian Bostridge, Gerald Finley and Brigitte Fassbaender. 

It also includes an interview with the San Francisco Symphony’s conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas; the New York Philharmonic’s Music Director, Alan Gilbert, discusses Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony; plus we look back at the remarkable career of American soprano Leontyne Price. 

Also featured in the trial issue: we analyse the breakthrough works of John Adams, we reconsider Sir Thomas Beecham’s classic recording of Puccini’s La bohème, and we recommend the very best recordings of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 2.

Please note: This is the North American edition of Gramophone. It includes all the pages of the UK edition and also a specialised 16 page supplement each issue, “Sounds of America”. This details the most exciting musical developments across North America as well as reviewing the most interesting specialist American releases.

Gramophone’s December issue marks the centenary of the death of the great French composer Gabriel Fauré – well known for a handful of works, including the Requiem and some chamber and piano pieces, we guide you through the full breadth of the output of this complex French composer. Elsewhere in the issue, we talk to longtime collaborators Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott about their new album for Sony Classical, one rooted in the music of Fauré, and including works by Saint-Saëns, Pauline Viardot, and Nadia and Lili Boulanger. Other articles include our annual Critics’ Choice feature, which invites our reviewers to name their album of the year; the Christmas round-up explores this year’s festive releases; and our annual Competition Guide outlines the best competitions across the UK, Europe, the US and beyond. In Icons we reflect on the stellar career of the conductor and organist David Willcocks, best known for his work as Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge; in Classics Reconsidered, two of our writers look back on the 1944 recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; while our Collection, meanwhile, explores the history on record of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 9. Contemporary Composer offers a summary of the work of the New York-based Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaityte; in Musician & the Score pianist Aimi Kobayashi talks about Schubert’s Four Impromptus, D935; and in My Music Jon Batiste talks about his long relationship with classical music. Plus, as always, the most recent releases are reviewed by our panel of expert critics, with the best being named Editor’s Choices.