Reviewer profiles

IRR's reviewers are experts from around the world, renowned for their scholarship, enthusiasm and lively writing style. Many are already highly regarded in their chosen musical fields but we will also introduce new writers who are establishing themselves in the world of classical music comment.

Nicholas Anderson is a writer. He was a BBC music producer for 20 years and has been a frequent broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He contributed to Gramophone for 25 years and now writes for Early Music Today and the BBC Music Magazine. He has contributed to Companion to the Concerto (edited by Robert Layton) and the Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach (edited by M. Boyd). He is the author of Baroque Music from Monteverdi to Handel (Thames and Hudson; 1994).

Colin Anderson says his defining musical moment came when Mr Palmer (Felicity Palmer's father) played an LP of Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals to a class of itinerant 11-year-olds. With piano and violin lessons developing musical instinct, Colin's record collection grew serendipitously. He is the Editor of The Classical Source (www.classicalsource.com), contributes to What's On in London and Fanfare and writes 'Suggested Listening' for the Philharmonia Orchestra's concert programmes.

Christopher Ballantine is the LG Joel Professor of Music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban, South Africa, and a Fellow of the University. His books are Music and its Social Meanings, Twentieth Century Symphony and Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz and Vaudeville. He has also contributed chapters to various other books, and is the author of numerous articles in a diverse range of journals, including Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, Musical Quarterly, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, African Music, Music Review and Opera.

Lucy Beckett is a writer of criticism, poetry and fiction. She is a contributor to Music and Letters, The Times Literary Supplement and The Tablet, to cite just a few. Her published books include the Cambridge Opera Handbook on Wagner's Parsifal.

Peter Branscombe is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of St Andrews. His musicological writings include the Cambridge Opera Handbook on Die Zauberflöte and, as co-Editor and part author, Schubert Studies. Problems of style and chronology. He has contributed more than 100 articles to Opera Grove and New Grove, numerous CD booklet notes, articles for opera-house programmes, and is one of the editors of the complete edition of the works of the Viennese satirical dramatist Johann Nestroy.

Piers Burton-Page joined the BBC in 1971, beginning a career of over 30 years working mostly for BBC Radio 3. These days he continues as a freelance producer, as well as with occasional presentation work and a growing career as a speaker on music. His particular interests are opera and British music of the past 100 years, and in 1994 he published Philharmonic Concerto, the authorized biography of Sir Malcolm Arnold. He is currently working on a book provisionally called Unfinished Symphonies.

Hugh Canning is Chief Music Critic of The Sunday Times, in which he writes about classical music every week. He is a regular contributor to Opera and a member of the magazine's editorial board. He is also the London correspondent of Opéra International, based in Paris.

Jonathan Carr is an author and journalist who has been based in continental Europe for four decades. His books include biographies of Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, and of Gustav Mahler. He is currently working on a life of the Wagner family and lives, appropriately, beside the Rhine close to the spot where Siegfried is said to have slain the dragon Fafner.

Warwick Cole read music at Brasenose College, Oxford where he was an organ scholar. He subsequently undertook doctoral research on aspects of performance practice in the music of J. S. Bach. He currently works as a freelance cellist, harpsichordist and fortepianist, and conducts the period-instrument ensemble The Corelli Orchestra. He has written articles for Musical Times and Early Music and was formerly the Editor and publisher of the Harpsichord and Fortepiano magazine.

Christopher Cook broadcasts regularly on BBC Radios 3, 4 and 5. He has presented Opera on 3 and Morning Performance for Radio 3 as well as Performance on 3. In 1993 he wrote and presented the Proms Chamber Music lunchtime concerts from the Victoria & Albert Museum and Chamber Music from the Wallace Collection for the network as well as reviewing for CD Review. Christopher also writes and reviews for Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. He has recently presented documentaries for Radios 3 and 4 on the history of the Stabat mater and the many composers who have chosen to set this liturgical text, the true story of St Cecilia, patron saint of music, on Rudolf Laban and a series of four programmes for the BBC World Service on the effects of 'Globalism' on music.

Mortimer H. Frank holds an M.A. in Musicology, a Ph.D. in English and is Professor Emeritus, City University of New York. Currently he teaches at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. His writings on music have appeared in a variety of learned and popular journals, including Fanfare, Opera News and The Chronicle of Higher Education in the US and Classic Record Collector in the UK. In the US he has also served as historical records critic for National Public Radio. His most recent book Arturo Toscanini: the NBC Years was published in 2002 by Amadeus Press.

Harris Goldsmith is a pianist, author, teacher and musicologist. He was a contributing Editor to High Fidelity from 1960-83 (also its Chief Music Critic). He was also the Program Annotator for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Sante Fe Chamber Musical Festivals. Harris has written for many publications, including The Strad, The Musical Times, Musical America and The New York Post. He has given concerts in the USA, Canada, Austria and the UK and has recorded for CBS, RCA, Stradivari Classics, Music & Arts and the Musical Heritage Society. He teaches at the Mannes College of Music and presently resides in New York City.

David Gutman is a prolific writer of CD and programme notes who, since 1996, has provided up-to-the-minute suggestions for further listening and further reading in every BBC Proms concert-programme booklet during the season. He has contributed reviews to The Independent and elsewhere and has written four books on subjects ranging from Prokofiev to Bob Dylan. A new edition of The Lennon Companion (co-edited with Liz Thomson) is published by Da Capo Press in spring 2004. David also manages the specialist repertoire (recordings) section of the MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited, the UK copyright collecting society.

Julian Haylock is currently Editor of International Piano, following spells as Editor of CD Review magazine (UK) and Reviews Editor of CD Classics. He is the author of books on Rachmaninov and Mahler, co-author of a series of annual pocket record guides to classical music on CD, and continues to contribute reviews, features and interviews to a wide range of publications. He was the producer of a series of recordings that included the piano concertos of Alexander Tcherepnin (with Murray McLachlan), and has at other times been on-air reviewer for LBC radio and a freelance violinist/violist. He is currently working closely with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on a variety of projects.

Simon Heighes is a writer, producer and broadcaster, but above all he is a music lover and, of course, an avid CD collector. His musical interests range across several eras - from Medieval to Classical - though he's particularly comfortable in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He is the author of a book on the music of Handel's English contemporaries, the architect of an award-winning reconstruction of Bach's St Mark Passion, and has contributed to the Oxford Composer Companion to Bach and The Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. His latest interest is in the Baroque music of Central and South America, on which he has presented a series for the BBC World Service; he can also be heard on BBC Radio 3's weekly CD Review.

John T. Hughes who specializes in vocal music, is also a regular contributor to Classic Record Collector, in which his article 'Voice Box' contains reviews of vocal reissues. He also contributed to the now-defunct International Opera Collector. He is the Deputy Editor of The Record Collector, a magazine concerned with singers of the past, and is chairman of The Recorded Vocal Art Society. His other great interest is cricket.

Ian Julier worked with Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers in London for the past 27 years, collaborating with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Magnus Lindberg, Robin Holloway, James McMillan and Mark-Anthony Turnage to produce publications and performing materials for a wide range of new works as well as managing major back-catalogue projects involving Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Britten, Elgar and Delius. He is also active as a pianist, accompanist and freelance music journalist. 2004 brought a move to Glyndebourne to pursue long-held operatic ambitions within a more performance-related environment.

Robert Layton is the author of the standard Master Musicians study of Sibelius and has translated Erik Tawaststjerna's five-volume Sibelius biography. He was the BBC's Music Talks Producer in the 1960s and 1970s and a senior music producer in the 1980s. He was also General Editor of the BBC Music Guides and is the author of books on Berwald and Grieg and Dvorák's symphonies and concertos. He has for many years been one of the three authors of The Penguin CD Guide.

Robert T. Levine is a New York born-and-bred music writer with a particular interest in music for the voice. His work has appeared in many periodicals and newspapers. He was the co-originator of Tower Records' magazine Classical Pulse!, founded and organized Amazon.com's classical music department and is the author of many books, including The Story of the Orchestra, four volumes (Il trovatore, The Marriage of Figaro, The Flying Dutchman and Fidelio) in the Black Dog & Leventhal Opera Library, and, most recently, Maria Callas: A Musical Biography. He lives in New York City and Woodstock, New York.

Calum MacDonald is Editor of Tempo, the quarterly magazine of modern music. He is a freelance writer, broadcaster, lecturer and contributor to many periodicals and symposia, as well as to The Revised New Grove. His book on the music of Edgard Varèse, Astronomer in Sound, was published last year by Kahn & Averill. Other books include the Master Musicians volumes on Brahms and Schoenberg, a three-volume study of the 32 symphonies of Havergal Brian, monographs on the British composers John Foulds and Ronald Stevenson, catalogues of Dallapiccola, Shostakovich and Dorati and a tourist guide to the city of Edinburgh. He also composes.

Farhan Malik is a freelance writer, lecturer on music and a recognized authority on historical pianists. He has numerous published discographies and articles to his credit and also contributes to International Piano magazine.

Donald Manildi is the Curator of the International Piano Archives, University of Maryland. He is a former broadcaster, critic and discographer. He has had, to date, approximately 600 reviews and articles published in a wide range of publications, including American Record Guide and International Piano. He is also a pianist and his 'Pianists as Composers' CD has recently been released on Elan.

Robert Matthew-Walker is a composer (composition pupil of Darius Milhaud), author and critic. He contributes to The Musical Times, Music and Musicians, Gramophone, Musical Opinion, Tempo, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, National Dictionary of Biography and many more. He is the author of 22 books on music. He was Editor of Music and Musicians (1984-88) and is the composer of over 100 works and the producer of over 150 classical albums.

Ivan Moody is a composer, conductor and writer. His music is available on the ECM, Hyperion, Telarc, Gothic, Arte Nova and Ars Musici labels. He has written for Contemporary Music Review, Early Music, The Musical Times and Tempo, contributes regularly to Gramophone and Goldberg, and is also a contributor to the Revised New Grove Dictionary. He has recently been appointed Artistic Director of the Echi Lontani Festival in Cagliari, Sardinia.

Andrew O'Connor studied law and philosophy at Sydney University. He worked for some years in classical musical retailing and then in law enforcement. He is now employed by the New South Wales Cabinet Office. Together with Christopher Price, he is repertory adviser to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

Patrick O'Connor is a writer and broadcaster. He is a regular contributor to Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Opera and The Economist. He was Consulting Editor to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. His books include Josephine Baker, Toulouse-Lautrec: The Nightlife of Paris and The Amazing Blonde Woman.

Stephen R. Pettitt studied music at Exeter University and has written on music since 1980 for The Times, Financial Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Express. Currently, however, he makes most of his living from The Evening Standard and The Sunday Times, and occasionally lobs an opinion piece at The Spectator. He's penned a couple of very minor books - introductions to Handel and to opera - and thinks it's probably about time he set his mind to something slightly more ambitious before it's too late. He has a lovely bolt-hole in a very quiet place in France where theoretically he could immerse himself in such an opus undistracted, but the need to earn a living means that he still has to spend most of his time in Ealing, West London. He's as happy with new music as with old, and quite likes some of the stuff in between too. He's often unduly distracted by cricket - watching, not playing - in the summer months.

Roger Pines is editorial dramaturg at Lyric Opera of Chicago and has written for magazines and programmes of North America's most distinguished opera companies. Among many other publications to which he has contributed are The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Opera News, Opera, The Opera Quarterly and BBC Music Magazine. He also writes two regular columns for OPERA America. His programme notes appear in recordings on five major labels.

Christopher Price is a lawyer working in Sydney, Australia. He is a repertoire adviser to the period-instrument Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. He wrote on Early Music and reviewed Early Music recordings for the Australian classical music review Soundscapes, until its demise in 1997. Currently, he is also a contributor to Goldberg magazine.

Stephen Pruslin As a pianist Stephen Pruslin has been called 'one of the world's outstanding interpreters of contemporary music', based on his performances at every major international festival and his dozens of commercial recordings. His solo repertoire has focused on Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy and Falla, as well as significant works by Carter, Maxwell Davies and Xenakis. He has performed and recorded with Boulez, Berio and Lutoslawski. Stephen is author of the scenario and libretto for Birtwistle's opera Punch and Judy, now considered a contemporary classic, of which the award-winning Decca LP recording, released on CD by Etcetera, has been included among 'The Vital Fifty' operas on compact disc by The Guardian and BBC Radio 3.

Peter J. Rabinowitz is Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He divides his time between music and narrative theory. He is the author of Before Reading and co-author, with Michael W. Smith, of Authorizing Readers; his articles range in subject from Dostoevsky to Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, from detective fiction to the ideology of musical structure, from Shostakovich to Scott Joplin. An active music critic for more than 25 years, he currently serves as a Contributing Editor of Fanfare.

Marc Rochester Since the late 1980s, when he was invited by the Government of Sarawak to work with the ethnic musicians of Borneo and produce the first commercial recording of their music, Marc has lived in Malaysia, lecturing at the country's first university music department and, since 1998, working with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra as its organist and programme annotator. He writes programme notes not just for the Malaysian Philharmonic but also for the Singapore Symphony and many other Asian orchestras, while continuing his work as a broadcaster and critic and writing for such magazines as Gramophone, Organist's Review and www.Andante.com

Carl Rosman is a clarinettist and conductor. He was born in England, grew up in Australia and now lives between Paris and Köln. He has written widely on music, contributing to publications such as Soundscapes, Sounds Australian and Musik & Ästhetik. He has performed throughout Australia and Europe, as well as in the USA, Japan and South Korea, both as a soloist and as a member of the new music ensembles musik Fabrik, Elision and Libra. He has worked directly with a wide range of composers from Gavin Bryars to Brian Ferneyhough.

Nigel Simeone is Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Sheffield. His books include several on French music, notably Paris - A Musical Gazetteer and two on Messiaen. He is currently working, with Peter Hill, on a major new biography of Messiaen, drawing for the first time on the composer's diaries and private papers. His other books include the standard catalogue of the works of Janácek (written with John Tyrrell). Nigel has been collecting records since he was a teenager and as a result has developed a passion for memorable performances of a vast repertoire.

W. Dean Sutcliffe is Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. Recent publications include a book on the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Editorship of the volume Haydn Studies. He is the founding Editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music, which begins publication in 2004, and has also recently completed an edition of six string quartets by Adalbert Gyrowetz.

Michael Tanner taught philosophy at Cambridge University from 1961-2003. His books include Nietzsche (1994) and Wagner (1996), and he has been the opera critic of The Spectator since 1996. He has reviewed CDs for Classic CD, ClassicFm, Opera and other journals.

Roger Thomas has written for Gramophone, Piano, Music Teacher, Modern Drummer, International DJ, Unknown Public and many other publications. He currently contributes to BBC Music Magazine and Jazz Review. He is the author of over a dozen reference books (published by Heinemann) for use in music education and is currently preparing a further series for Hodder Wayland. An inveterate percussionist, he performs regularly in both orchestral and jazz contexts.

Charles Timbrell is Professor of Music and Co-ordinator of Keyboard Studies at Howard University, Washington, DC. He is the author of French Pianism and the forthcoming biography of the pianist and composer Walter Rummel, as well as articles in Music & Letters, International Piano and The Revised New Grove Dictionary. He has performed throughout the USA and Europe and has recorded on the Dante label.

Raymond S. Tuttle works with student discipline and alcohol education at Mary Washington College, a four- year liberal arts institution in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA. He has contributed to a wide range of music-related websites and journals, including Fanfare, Soundscapes, Miami New Times, Esquire and Piano & Keyboard, and has written booklet notes for many CD releases. He studied piano for more than ten years, and sings in a non-professional choir.

John Warrack was formerly Lecturer in Music at the University of Oxford. He has published studies of Weber and Tchaikovsky, and is co-author of The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. His most recent book is German Opera: from the Beginnings to Wagner. He is on the Editorial Boards of the New Berlioz Edition and the Neue Weber Gesamtausgabe, for whom he has edited works

Richard Whitehouse has written widely on twentieth-century music and culture. He has also written many programme notes and CD booklet notes, contributes to various websites and has presented a paper at the Nikos Skalkottas-Tage in Berlin. He is currently editing the Boosey & Hawkes Music Diary, and recently contributed to a TV documentary on the music of Luigi Nono..

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