Kate Rockstrom
Kate Rockstrom regularly reviews classical music for Readings. She also performs as a flautist, as well as writing about music and books.
Review — 6 Sep 2021
The British Project by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
I always like being honest in my reviews and to be frank, this is an odd duck of a recording: the glories of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by…
Review — 2 Aug 2021
Ravel & Saint-Saëns: Piano Trios by Sitkovetsky Trio
Ravel was a sophisticated composer who was exacting and worked towards compositional perfection, which is beautifully evident in this Piano Trio in A minor. However, he was also described as…
Review — 2 Aug 2021
One Movement Symphonies: Barber, Sibelius & Scriabin by Kansas City Symphony & Michael Stern
A symphony is classified by most musical dictionaries as an extended work written in the Western Art Music tradition, most often in four movements. So what happens when a composer…
Review — 2 Aug 2021
Baroque by Nicola Benedetti & Benedetti Baroque Orchestra
What is it about Baroque music that endears itself to the modern 21st-century audience? Is it the unabashed complexity or soulful slow movements? Or does the passion of the musicians…
Review — 29 Jun 2021
French Works for Flute Adam Walker, Timothy Ridout & James Baillieu
In listening to Chandos’ latest flute offering, I was delighted by the gentleness of Adam Walker’s musical phrases. I never thought the first movement of Franck’s Violin Sonata could be…
Review — 29 Jun 2021
Brahms: Piano Concertos András Schiff & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Those brawny first notes. Strings sawing, with strength and strident trills they announce Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1. Then out of the storm emerges András Schiff at the piano –…
Review — 30 Mar 2021
Liszt: Works for Solo Piano by Benjamin Grosvenor
British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has been a regular in these pages for many years now. Electrifying the classical music community in 2011 with his first foray into Liszt’s repertoire, we…
Review — 30 Mar 2021
Beethoven: Works for Flute by Emmanuel Pahud & Daniel Barenboim
Why is Beethoven so delightfully cute on the flute? Beethoven might be rolling in his grave as I say this, but as I listened to this album, I just kept…
Review — 28 Mar 2021
Romance: Music for Violin and Orchestra by Danish Composers, performed by Christina Åstrand, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra & Jukka Iisakkila
A lustrous pearl adorns the cover of this album and it is a perfect representation of this repertoire. Warmth permeates every note of these Danish masterworks thanks to the beauty…
Review — 2 Feb 2021
Silver Age: Scriabin, Stravinsky & Prokofiev by Daniil Trifonov
From 1890 through to the revolution and the first two decades of the 20th century, Russia was gripped with creative fever. The poets, musicians and artists of the era were…