Classical Features
First Person Plural: the Calidore String Quartet on music for their torn nationSaturday, 03 November 2018
Classical musicians spend much of their lives inhabiting the realms of the past. To effectively practise and perform the music of Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and countless others, performers must combine research and personal intuition to time travel into the era of these great composers’ lives. Read more... |
Refreshing the sonic spectrum: disability and excellence in British orchestrasThursday, 01 November 2018
Classical music struggles to shrug off the perception of being something of a rarefied world. Or “hermetically sealed” as Charles Hazlewood, founder of the British Paraorchestra describes it. “Classical music has to break out from its ivory tower," says Hazlewood. Read more... |
Like a baton out of hell: Conductors at the 2018 PromsTuesday, 11 September 2018
Discreetly poking his camera through one of the red curtains around the Albert Hall, chief Proms photographer Chris Christodoulou gets the action shots others would kill for. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Suoni dal Golfo Festival - romantics shine in the Bay of PoetsMonday, 03 September 2018
If only Liszt had started at the end of his Byron-inspired opera Sardanapalo. The mass immolation of Assyrian concubines might have been something to compare with the end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Instead he only sketched out the first act, complete until nearly the end, and the inevitable comparisons with the Wagner of the late 1840s are not unfavourable by any means. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Lucerne Festival - all-Beethoven and all-Ravel concerts from the greatestWednesday, 29 August 2018
Like the Proms, but over a more concentrated time-span, in a much better concert hall and with a swankier audience paying a good deal more, the Lucerne Festival offers a summer parade of the world's greatest orchestras and conductors night after night. Read more... |
h 100 Young Influencers of the Year: James Bingham on community choirsWednesday, 22 August 2018
Forty thousand choirs in the UK! Choral directors of the UK rejoice. Voices Now have finally published the Big Choral Census. They’ve put hard data to something we knew was true: there are loads of choirs and loads of people who love singing in them. Finally we can present government with solid evidence that meaningful investment into the art form will be money well spent. Surely a cause for celebration? Yes... but not entirely. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2018 - canaries in front of a Périgord altarMonday, 20 August 2018
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans selling their wares in Riberac's big Friday market. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music - stratospheric performances by a tropical seaSaturday, 18 August 2018
North of Brisbane, south of Cairns and a short boat trip from the turquoise waters around the Great Barrier Reef, Townsville is the site of a north-east Australian military base. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2018 - Pärt, Leonskaja and friends hard at playMonday, 13 August 2018
Unanticipated miracles happen every summer in the quiet paradise of Estonia's seaside capital. The first this year came as a total surprise. Having got off the afternoon coach from Riga last Monday and dumped bags at my villa base in Pärnu's garden zone, I headed back into town for the first event. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Riga - 43,290 Latvians sing and dance for their countryTuesday, 24 July 2018
"They incessantly break down, destroy and fragment the mistrust that exists among people," wrote a Latvian journalist of a folklore group during the start of the Baltic countries' "singing revolution" against Soviet rule in 1988. Read more... |
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Dunedin Consort, Mulroy, Wigmore Hall review - songs of love...
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual...
People, Places and Things, Trafalgar Theatre review - a scin...
It’s unusual for a play to be revived with its original director and star, let alone a decade after they premiered the piece. But here we are,...
Withnail and I, Birmingham Rep revenue - Bruce Robinson’s 19...
Let’s put our cards firmly on the table here. I am a big fan of Bruce Robinson’s cinematic masterpiece about two out-of-work actors who live in...
Jack Doherty, Soho Theatre review - warm and witty childhood...
For fans of a certain age the name Jack Docherty will always be associated with a very good run of chat shows on Channel 5; he was also the star...
Album: Jack Savoretti - Miss Italia
It’s a long way to the middle. Jack Savoretti has worked hard to get there. He’s grafted. His first album, 2007’s Between the Minds,...
Two Tickets to Greece review - the highs and lows of a holid...
Two women were best friends at school but they haven’t...
Hoard review - not any old rubbish
A visually dazzling, fiercely acted psychological drama with a manic comic edge, Hoard channels an 18-year-old South Londoner’s quest to...
Hidden Door 10th Birthday Party, St James Quarter, Edinburgh...
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Blu-ray: Chocolat
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect...
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often...