Classical Features

theartsdesk in Bergen 2: Leif Ove Andsnes curates

David Nice Monday, 08 June 2015

If this were only the usual international festival – and it’s still a big “only” where Bergen’s flagship fortnight of theatre, dance, art and music is concerned – it might not be easy to justify swanning off to one of the most beautifully situated cities in the world. What drew me in the programme, though, were two unique and probably unrepeatable concerts put together by local boy made more than good Leif Ove Andsnes.

Listed: Essential BBC Proms

theartsdesk Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Hottest tickets for seats at the Proms have probably all gone already. Yet the beauty of it is that so long as you start queueing early enough you can always get to hear the greatest, or rather the most popular, artists, for £5 in the Arena which is of course easily the best place to be acoustically in the notoriously unpredictable Royal Albert Hall.

theartsdesk in Dresden: Fire and Ice

Paul Gent Sunday, 24 May 2015

Dresden is slowly opening up to the world. All but destroyed by British bombing in the Second World War, locked away inside Communist East Germany for 40 years, it is now becoming a tourist honeypot. On a warm day in May, you can see the snap-happy groups of Japanese and Germans trailing behind their guides, marvelling at the imposing Baroque buildings in the Old Town.

theartsdesk in Thuringia: Easter with Bach

David Nice Sunday, 12 April 2015

Sing, dance, breathe: those are the three imperatives for successful Bach performance, and three superlative interpretations at the Thuringia Bach Festival glorified them in excelsis.

Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015): A virtuoso remembered

Christopher Lambton Monday, 30 March 2015

Ronald Stevenson, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, was a composer and pianist who will be much missed both in the small Borders village where he lived and by the much larger musical community in Scotland and beyond. As a composer he was unashamedly rooted in the late 19^th Century tradition of intellectual pianism – in his music you can trace a line of descent from Bach to Liszt through his great hero Busoni.

Building a Library: Living with Sibelius

David Nice Thursday, 19 March 2015

I’ve just spent five weeks in the company of a very austere and sometimes frightening masterpiece, Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, hearing a great many recordings of it for Building a Library, the abiding gem of Radio 3’s CD Review in which the critic takes the listener through the piece and chooses a front runner.

Rattle for the LSO: great or just good news?

David Nice Tuesday, 03 March 2015

Having manoeuvred to get a new concert hall for London earmarked in principle, Sir Simon Rattle has finally agreed, as we thought he would, to take charge of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017.

Sci-Fi Week: Scoring the Impossible

graham Rickson Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Classical composers have always enjoyed depicting the implausible. Operas based on mythological subjects abound, creating near-impossible staging demands. Musical works based on science fiction are far rarer. Haydn's plodding opera Life on the Moon isn't one of his most scintillating works.

theartsdesk in Stockholm: A Nobel Prize for Musical Excellence

David Nice Sunday, 12 October 2014

Should you not have caught one of the 20^th century’s handful of greatest Wagnerian singers live - I did, just once, in a Prom of uneven excerpts - chances are that you first heard Birgit Nilsson in Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung on Sir Georg Solti’s Vienna Philharmonic Ring recording.

theartsdesk in Bamberg: Top Town, Top Orchestra

David Nice Sunday, 28 September 2014

As a town of 70,000 or so people, Bamberg boxes dazzlingly above its weight in at least two spheres. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, risen to giddy heights under its chief conductor of the last 14 years Jonathan Nott, is decisively among Germany’s top five, and acknowledged as such in its substantial state funding (to the enviable tune of 80 percent, a figure known elsewhere, I believe, only in Norway). And a galaxy of great buildings has won the place UNESCO World Heritage status.