Strauss
David Nice
A Salome without the head of John the Baptist is nothing new: several directors have perversely decided they could do without in recent productions. In concert, the illusion needs the charismatic force of a great soprano and conductor. We got that at the Proms 11 years ago with Nina Stemme and Donald Runnicles. Now Asmik Grigorian, even more the ideal as the obsessive teenage princess, crowns the end of a season that has been a total triumph for Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra.I've never bought the line that Richard Strauss's incredible 1905 psychodrama to most of Oscar Wilde's text Read more ...
David Nice
You could plan an entire concert season around the theme of “late style”, its paradoxes and variations. For this one-off, many of us expected a concentrated mesh of Edward Said’s only-connect observations with a well-balanced musical programme, something along the lines of the recent 90-minute cloud tapestry the City of London Sinfonia wove with atmospheric scientist Simon Clark (Rachel Halliburton, whom I accompanied, loved it, as did I).That was to underestimate the latest collaboration with the London Review of Books, involving four very fine actors voicing not just Said’s chosen literary Read more ...
David Nice
Let’s finally face the elephant in the room: the most popular Viennese operetta, packed with hit numbers, no longer works on the stage as a whole. The central party, yes, never more high-energy delight than here, with a cast of 13 and 10 instrumentalists on stage. As for the rest, not even the likes of Richard Jones, Harry Kupfer and Christopher Alden have won a total victory. Davey Kelleher comes closer, but the high jinks can still be wearing in the outer acts.For its touring farce, Irish National Opera has dropped the "Die" from the title of Johann Strauss II's smash hit, allowing the Read more ...
David Nice
In one sense it was a New Year’s Day “nearly”, just stopping short of giving us the already great Irish lyric-dramatic soprano Jennifer Davis in the music of the man she was born to sing, Richard Strauss. Berlin will witness her Arabella shortly, but the one Bavarian intruder in the otherwise all-Viennese carnival yesterday afternoon, the Moonlight Music from Capriccio, stopped before the Countess’s final scene.Yet that slice of heaven still served as a breath from another planet in a glittering programme: did the audience realise it was getting one of the world's best horn players, Alec Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two splendid pieces of orchestral virtuosity began and finished the second Saturday concert by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds at the Bridgewater Hall. It was given the title of “Mischief and Magic”, an apt summary.For mischief we had Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, perhaps the most perfect of his orchestral tone poems in that it not only tells a story but is beautifully shaped and balanced as an extended classical rondo.The episodes were given their folklore-based descriptions by Strauss (“Through the market he rides”, “Dressed as a priest he oozes unction”, “ Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their concert performance of Richard Strauss’ last opera Capriccio.First to Verdi. Not only was the playing rich and majestic, but there was terrific clarity, too, and I was repeatedly struck by how pristine the details were. I don’t think I’ve ever previously noticed the role of the piccolo, for example, and the quintet of horns made themselves Read more ...
Simon Thompson
People hold lots of different opinions about the European Union, but there’s really only one acceptable opinion to be held about the European Union Youth Orchestra; namely, that they’re brilliant. Their visit to the Edinburgh International Festival consisted of two hour-long concerts, but the hundred musicians, aged 18-26, hailing from 27 countries, crammed more artistry and brilliance into those two concerts than some orchestras manage in a season.Sure, the tone wasn’t always there, and occasionally you could notice a lack of maturity. The violins sounded rather too bright for Elgar’s " Read more ...
graham.rickson
Chopin: Études op.10 & op.25 Yunchan Lim (Decca)Chopin Nicolas van Poucke (Night Dreamer)I’m reviewing these two Chopin discs by a pair of young men together, even though there are lots of differences between their playing, and the way the albums have been put together. Yunchan Lim is just 20, the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn competition, in 2022. His first album, on Decca, is of Chopin’s Études (the op.10 and op.25 sets), which are favourites of mine, and perfect “young man’s music” in their unashamed show-offiness and heart-on-sleeve emotionalism. That they are Read more ...
mark.kidel
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital. In her native France, and in the rest of Europe, she has gathered ecstatic reviews for her performance and recording of a range of repertoire that stretches from the Baroque and Mozart to Richard Strauss, Debussy and Poulenc.Accompanied by Mathieu Pordoy, she offered the rapt audience at the Wigmore an artfully designed programme of Mozart and Strauss, weaving her way through surprising segues and contrasts with seamless ease. On the face of it, Read more ...
David Nice
“Based on the play by Oscar Wilde,” declared publicity on Dublin buses and buildings, reminding opera-cautious citizens that the poet whose text Richard Strauss used for his own Salome grew up only 10 minutes’ walk away from Daniel Libeskind's Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. Word of mouth, meanwhile, did much in a mere week of performances to spread the news that Sinéad Campbell Wallace’s interpretation of the fast-unravelling teenage princess was a sensation.The instant standing ovation at the end on Saturday night may be typical for Dublin, but the deafening and sustained cheers, more like Read more ...
David Nice
Those were happy days back in 2014 when, justifiably flushed with the success of the Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde revival, director Christof Loy, music director Antonio Pappano and soprano Nina Stemme mooted possibly the toughest role challenge of them all, that of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s vengeful obsessive Elektra. Yet nearly a decade is a long time in the life of a dramatic soprano, and on last night’s evidence, it's come too late in London.The music drama might have carried it, but oddly, given Loy’s track record, nothing that happens onstage matches the focused intensity and spine- Read more ...
David Nice
On an Edinburgh afternoon of torrential rain close to the winter solstice, what ecstasy to be transported to an ancient Greek midsummer day, a Claude landscape with shepherds calling across the hills, painted in the most translucent colours by Richard Strauss in his late mastery. All it needs are world-class voices and an orchestra that glows; it got both in Scottish Opera’s concert staging. From photos taken at earlier performances in Glasgow and the Lammermuir Festival back in September, the worry was that director Emma Jenkins’ thoughts would tend too much to the troubled 1930s in Read more ...