Simon Callow CBE is one of Britain's most popular and recognisable actors - appearing in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and A Room with a View - and also a writer, broadcaster and theatre director. His lifelong love for classical music has seen him directing opera productions and appearing with various orchestras around the world as well as fronting documentaries and writing about composers and their work. He is one of the narrators in Sword in the Soul, a modern Passion by Francis Grier with words by Rowan Williams, out now on Orchid Classics.
My grandmother, who had a wonderful contralto voice, owned an enormous collection of rather battered 78s which I grew up listening to. I discovered Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording of SIBELIUS’s Swan of Tuonela, a work of such mystery and enchantment that it cast a spell on me and I listened to it over and over again. The music transported me to another realm of experience and imagination, and once I discovered classical music I became what you might call a nerd, or trainspotter!
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A way with words
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A glittering beacon
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Christoph Willibald Gluck
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Time to vote for the best recordings of the last 12 months
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Kindred spirits
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In the early months of 1857, Verdi had Shakespeare on his mind, and specifically King Lear.
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King of the Waltz, Dutch musical impresario André Rieu has taken the world by storm with his Johann Strauss Orchestra.
