chamber music
Concert Theatre DSCH, Norwegian CO, Oslo Opera House Scene 2 review - Shostakovich choreographed for strings and accordionMonday, 05 June 2023Do we really need instrumental Shostakovich with lighting, movement, costumes and video projection? I might have said no before having seen what the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra could do with former leader Terje Tønnesen, performing the Chamber... Read more... |
Jerusalem Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - singing to make the heart leapWednesday, 31 May 2023Conversation just before this concert started concerned Verdi’s Il trovatore and the truism that it needs “the four greatest voices in the world”. Whether or not the quartets we heard by Mozart, Prokofiev and Brahms demand the same in string terms,... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Sheffield Chamber Music Festival - romps and meditations at the highest levelWednesday, 24 May 2023Any chamber music festival that kicks off with Czech genius Martinů's Parisian jeu d'esprit ballet-sextet La revue de cuisine and ends its first concert with Saint-Saëns's glory of a Septet for trumpet, piano and strings is likely to be a winner.... Read more... |
Lucinda Chua, ICA review - sublimity on a rainy evening in LondonThursday, 11 May 2023As my editor noted, this was the first gig in his 30 years of music journalism that had guided meditation as its support act. This set the tone for a beautiful, peaceful evening at the ICA for Lucinda Chua, a homecoming gig and a welcome listen to... Read more... |
Castalian String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - late Britten keeps equally demanding companySaturday, 29 April 2023Rigorous, hauntingly original and unlike each other, Britten’s three numbered quartets could share a programme and still stake equal claims on our attention. That might be tough on the players, but the Castalians haven’t been easy on themselves in... Read more... |
Belcea Quartet, Chamayou, Wigmore Hall review - romantic winged beast soars over neobaroque chameleonFriday, 14 April 2023In search of relatively rare fabulous beasts like César Franck’s Piano Quintet – given a fantastical performance last night – you often have to take in the ubiquitous Shostakovich specimen, the modest work of a master using simple means to his own... Read more... |
Pritchin, Emelyanychev, SCO Soloists, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - chamber music at its most thrillingTuesday, 28 February 2023After full orchestral performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto and First Symphony, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra shone a more intimate light on the composer’s oeuvre with a recital of chamber works in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall on Sunday.Having made... Read more... |
Jerusalem Quartet, Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - freedom and rigour in perfect balanceFriday, 17 February 2023It’s not often that the most bittersweet moment in a rich concert comes in the encore. Elisabeth Leonskaja had already played the generous extra in question, the Dumka movement of Dvořák’s A major Piano Quintet, with the Staatskapelle Quartet only a... Read more... |
Leonskaja, Staatskapelle Streichquartett, Wigmore Hall / Secret Byrd, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - genuine versus theatricalTuesday, 31 January 2023It’s dangerous to claim a sense of absolute rightness about a musical performance; that could mean no more than responding to an interpretation which happens to chime with your own subjective expectations. Yet I’m happy to stick my neck out and say... Read more... |
Castalian String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - genius in works and performanceThursday, 26 January 2023The Castalian String Quartet is half what I remember, but only literally: while viola-player Charlotte Bonneton and cellist Christopher Graves may have departed, their replacements, Ruth Gibson and Steffan Morris, more than earned their... Read more... |
Best of 2022: Classical music concertsWednesday, 28 December 2022While the call for livening up the concert format remains dubious – beyond unusual settings and a will to communicate, the rest is window-dressing – there’s always a special buzz about festival-like concatenations of events. For that reason, four... Read more... |
Album: Craig Fortnam - Luna One - A-Sides - Full Moon Releases October 2021 - September 2022Thursday, 17 November 2022There can be few currently operating musicians who have a sound as distinctive as Craig Fortnam’s. Whether solo or with his erstwhile band The North Sea Radio Orchestra, his writing has a kind of zig-zagging melody that’s part Robert Wyatt, part... Read more... |