David Nice
david.nice
- Bio
- David was formerly a music critic for the Guardian and Sunday Correspondent. A regular BBC music broadcaster, he has written books on Elgar, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and the history of opera, and is currently working on the second volume of his Prokofiev biography for Yale University Press
Articles by David Nice
Karita Mattila, Ville Matvejeff, Wigmore Hall
Friday, 05 April 2013
At first it all felt too much. In addition to the garish red arum lilies either side of the platform, an overwhelming scent of eau de Cologne from a neighbour and the always hard-to-fight Wigmore... Read more... |
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Egarr, Barbican Hall
Saturday, 30 March 2013
A Leipzig church is surely the place we’d most like to be for Bach on Good Friday. Never mind: the Barbican Hall is kinder to the best period instrument ensembles than it is to big symphony... Read more... |
Die Feen, Chelsea Opera Group, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Monday, 18 March 2013
Like Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges and Puccini’s Turandot, Wagner’s first opera – The Fairies in English – has its roots in a “theatrical fable” by the 18th century Venetian playwright Carlo... Read more... |
The Gospel According to the Other Mary, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel, Barbican Hall
Sunday, 17 March 2013
“I do not believe in miracles,” scoffs Herodias in Oscar Wilde’s - and Richard Strauss’s - Salome. “I have seen too many.” I know how she feels. So it was a bit of a shock to find the highest-... Read more... |
Mies Julie, Riverside Studios
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Snow flurries outside, steam heat within. Writer-director Yael Farber’s transposition of Strindberg from a 19th-century Swedish estate to a contemporary farm in South Africa’s Karoo region on the eve... Read more... |
Phaëton, Les Talens Lyriques, Rousset, Barbican Hall
Saturday, 09 March 2013
Excess of light and heat sends sun-god Apollo’s son Phaeton tumbling from his father’s chariot. The light was iridescent and the temperature well conditioned as peerless Christophe Rousset led his... Read more... |
Mørk, Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Festival Hall
Friday, 08 March 2013
Curious and curiouser. Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto, centrepiece of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s latest Philharmonia concert celebrating the Polish master’s centenary, adds ballast to the idea that the... Read more... |
Worden, BBC Concert Orchestra, de Ridder, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Monday, 04 March 2013
Who’d have guessed a full house for the third of The Rest is Noise festival’s Berlin nights? This time there were no obvious superstars, unless you follow singer-songwriter Shara Worden of My... Read more... |
The Threepenny Opera, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall
Sunday, 03 March 2013
Given a fair few strange and languishing Brecht-Weill pieces that The Rest is Noise Festival’s Berlin strand might have explored, Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO had a tough time of it by piecing... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch on Strauss and Wagner
Sunday, 03 March 2013
In many ways the most well-tempered of conductors, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) brought a peerless orchestral transparency and beauty of line to the great German classics. Even the most overloaded... Read more... |
Liza Minnelli, Royal Festival Hall
Saturday, 02 March 2013
It’s Weimar Berlin time as the Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival moves through the 20th-century music scene – so it must be Liza Minnelli time too. Or must it? Though she’s immortalised... Read more... |
Schiff, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
You’d not expect Einstein to have daubed Amadeus’s Ninth Piano Concerto with the label “Mozart’s Eroica”. The really famous one didn’t : that piece of punditry came not from Albert the Great but... Read more... |
Wang, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dausgaard, Barbican Hall
Saturday, 23 February 2013
Orchestral volcanoes were erupting all over Europe around the year 1915. It was courageous enough to make a mountain chain out of three of them in a single concert. I was less prepared for the white-... Read more... |
Gerstein, Philharmonia Orchestra, Gardner, Royal Festival Hall
Monday, 18 February 2013
You don’t have to live under a totalitarian regime to write music of profound anguish. I was driven to argue the point at a Shostakovich symposium when an audience quizzer took issue with my... Read more... |
Rhinocéros, Barbican Theatre
Friday, 15 February 2013
I laughed quite a bit going round the exhibition to which the Barbican’s latest theatre events are tied, The Bride and the Bachelors. Pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 “Readymade” Why Not Sneeze, Rrose... Read more... |
Dear World, Charing Cross Theatre
Thursday, 14 February 2013
It's odd that Jerry Herman merits only a passing mention in Stephen Sondheim's two-volume autobiographical take on Broadway words and music, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. In a couple of... Read more... |
How to contact David Nice
- personal website
- http://www.davidnice.blogspot.com
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