Wigmore Hall
Bernard Hughes
Robin Holloway is a composer and, until his retirement in 2011, don at Cambridge, where he taught many of the leading British composers of the last half-century. He has also always written on music, including a long-standing column in The Spectator, previously publishing two collections of “essays and diversions” (which I confess I haven’t read).Now comes his summa, Music’s Odyssey: An Invitation to Western Classical Music, styled as “an invitation to western classical music”. The first thing to say is: it’s very long. Indeed, the proof copy of 1,216 pages didn’t fit through my letterbox Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a spectrum of pieces which brim with wit and inventiveness. This lunchtime concert with violinist Anthony Marwood was a sheer joy, as they together traversed a range of style and tone, richly entertaining a very decent Bank Holiday crowd in the Wigmore Hall.The starting point was an obvious one: the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. This sequence of three run together had a reassuring familiarity, and a strong whiff of the Parisian café. The swooning violin melody Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Recently hailed by The Observer as “today’s most exciting British countertenor”, Iestyn Davies is on a roll. Indeed, many critics would – and have – gone further, seeing this young British singer as the natural heir to David Daniels and Andreas Scholl, the pre-eminent countertenor of his generation. Since winning the Royal Philharmonic Society’s fiercely contested Young Artist of the Year award in 2010, Davies’s career has gathered serious momentum and shows no sign of slowing yet.While castrati were the rockstars of their day, enjoying the adoration of women and the admiration of men across Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Beethoven has been a real touchstone for classical music in the UK in 2011; flattening all in their way, the mighty Leipzig Gewandhaus and Riccardo Chailly delivered high-speed, high-risk thrills in their complete cycle of symphonies.But while their recording, also released this year, is unquestionably my classical CD of 2011, in performance they were outdone by the stylish whirlwind of John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.This year’s Proms season for me was all about the CBSO and Andris Nelsons, who balanced a tenderly diffident performance of Walton’s Violin Read more ...