Record Review Podcast

Anna Lapwood compares recordings of Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes and picks a favourite.

When Peter Grimes premiered in 1945 it immediately put Britten, uniquely among his compatriots, in the first rank of the world's opera composers. As well as the consummate solo vocal and choral writing, the orchestra, too, plays a vital role in Britten's dark drama of alienation and hypocrisy in a small Suffolk fishing community. Several purely orchestral episodes sometimes punctuate, sometimes push forward the narrative and four of these were published separately as the Sea Interludes. Much performed and recorded, Britten's dazzling orchestration vividly conjures up Dawn, Sunday Morning, Moonlight and a Storm.

Jonathan Cross compares recordings of Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements and picks a favourite.

The first movement of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements began life as a piano concerto. And in a failed bid to join the ranks of well-paid movie composers in Hollywood where Stravinsky now lived, the second movement, with its prominent harp part, was originally conceived to accompany a vision of the Virgin Mary in the 1943 film Song of Bernadette. Stravinsky's genius was to add a third movement, related to the first, and so create a cohesive, satisfying and brilliant whole despite the disparate origins of its first two parts. He completed the Symphony in 1945 and, despite a deeply felt sense of exile, loss and nostalgia, it's perhaps some of the most American-sounding of Stravinsky's music, capped by a resplendent final chord, straight out of Hollywood.

Nigel Simeone joins Hannah to discuss a wide variety of recorded performances of Janacek's opera Jenufa.

Completed in 1902 Jenufa was Janacek's first great masterpiece. It is a tragic tale of small-minded village attitudes, infanticide and redemption. But as with all Janacek, the music is totally life-enhancing without being in the least sentimental. At the heart of the story is the strong but complicated relationship between Jenufa and her mother: they share some of the most heart-breaking music in the opera.

Mark Lowther joins Andrew to discuss a huge range of recorded performances of the Fourth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was born 150 years ago this autumn. First performed in 1935, its austerity and directness seem to presage the looming horror of World War II.

Laura Tunbridge recommends her favourite recording of Beethoven's String Quartet in F, Op 18 No 1.

In Vienna at the end of the 18th century, Beethoven was in his late 20s, the supreme keyboard composer-improviser of his day. With dogged determination and a degree of circumspection he began picking off various genres over which the shadows of the late Mozart and the very much alive Haydn loomed large. With piano sonatas, piano trios and string trios under his belt, it took two laborious years to complete the Op 18 set of six string quartets. The first of the set was intended to make a big impression. Its imposing scale and wide expressive range are typical of the young Beethoven, including a restless dynamic energy and a tragic slow movement inspired, he said, by the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet.

Allyson Devenish compares recordings of Chopin's Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor and chooses her favourite.

Chopin's final piano sonata was composed in 1844 and dedicated to Countess Émilie de Perthuis. It is a work of immense complexity, both technically and musically, and comprises four movements. The sonata opens with heavy chords in B minor, but journeys through a Scherzo and dream-like Nocturne, before ending in a dazzling Finale, which starts in B minor but ends triumphantly in a B major Coda.

Composer, prominent conductor and influential composition teacher, Zemlinsky was at the centre of turn-of the century Viennese musical life. Among his distinguished pupils were Arnold Schoenberg (who also happened to be his brother-in-law), Berg, Webern and Korngold. He also taught and was romantically involved with Alma Schindler until she decided to marry a certain Gustav Mahler. And it's Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde which provided the model for Zemlinsky's best-known work, his1923 Lyric Symphony. Mahler had chosen Chinese poetry for his song-symphony and Zemlinsky, too, looked east, setting poems by the then fashionable 1913 Nobel Prize-winning Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore. The seven texts, an exploration of love, are sung alternately by baritone and soprano, accompanied in lush late-Romantic style by a large orchestra.

Messiah is Handel's best-known work and one of the most frequently performed choral works in western music. It was composed in 1741 with a text compiled from the King James Bible. It is full of show stoppers such as "For unto us a child is born", "The trumpet shall sound" and the ever-rousing "Hallelujah" chorus.

Gillian Moore compares recordings of Mahler's Ninth Symphony and chooses her favourite.

Mahler's final completed symphony is a monumental achievement ranging in emotion from wild passion to deep despair and finally resignation. He wrote it in 1908 and 1909 but did not live to see it performed. Leonard Bernstein said of the last movement: "It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. In ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything."

Inspired by the tumult of the impending French Revolution, Mozart's intricate and sublime opera Le nozze di Figaro proved explosive yet rapidly became one of the true masterpieces of the genre. Nicholas Kenyon discusses a wide range of interpretations with Andrew, before settling for what he believes to be the ultimate recording to buy, download or stream.