Music to my ears

In the absence of much live music, I’ve been enjoying a lot of concert video recordings, including Christian Ferras’s 1965 performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with a young Zubin Mehta conducting. In the second movement, right at the emotional centre of the piece, the camera zooms in on Ferras and you suddenly realise there are tears rolling down his face. They play with such poise and you can really feel the connection between conductor and soloist.

I recently discovered conductor Kirill Petrenko’s recording of Suk’s tone poem with the Berlin Comic Opera Orchestra.