Classical Reviews
Manchester Collective, Chetham's, Manchester review - flair and varietyFriday, 29 June 2018
Manchester Collective is a new and enterprising group of musicians determined not just to create performances of high quality but to offer a new way in which the performances themselves are done. They started from scratch at the end of 2016, and I saw one of the first of their efforts, given at Islington Mill – a laid-back space in the basement of an old industrial building in Salford – in March last year. Read more... |
Imogen Cooper, Wigmore Hall review – Viennese schools refreshedThursday, 28 June 2018
In the right hands, the music of the various Viennese Schools can still sound almost startlingly original. Imogen Cooper’s are very much the right hands, containing a rare, refined artistry that only continues to grow with the years. Read more... |
Anthony Marwood and Friends, Peasmarsh Festival - elegies in a country churchWednesday, 27 June 2018
A magnificent riven oak with gnarly branches stands in the secluded graveyard of SS Peter and Paul's Church Peasmarsh, near Rye. Transport it in your mind to Flexham Park in a very different part of Sussex, imagine it struck by lightning and it could be one of that twisted group which Elgar encountered on a short walk from his Bedham cottage in the summer of 1918, subsequently permeating his massive and masterly Piano Quintet with the ghost story surrounding them. Read more... |
Benedetti, LSO, Noseda, Barbican review – power and focusMonday, 25 June 2018
Shostakovich is ideal for Nicola Benedetti. His music requires effortless and understated virtuosity, as well as a confident and commanding maturity of interpretation. Benedetti has been demonstrating these qualities since her late teens, and all were evident in this reading of the First Violin Concerto, which proved an intense and compelling listening experience. Read more... |
The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Grange Festival review - enjoyable if conventional productionMonday, 25 June 2018
Just as the Last Night of the Proms is an end-of-term party with a concert tacked on, The Grange Festival (like other similar venues) offers a massive picnic interspersed with some opera. Read more... |
The Courtesan’s Gaze, Fieri Consort, Handel House review – historical female composers in contextWednesday, 20 June 2018
From an early age, Barbara Strozzi would have entertained the guests of her father’s Venetian academy with songs, including her own works. A similarly intimate room at London’s Handel House museum provided a suitable setting for Strozzi’s work to be heard alongside the greatest of late Renaissance vocal composers, Claudio Monteverdi. Monteverdi came out ahead, but only by a nose. Read more... |
Bach Weekend, Barbican review - vivid and vibrant celebrationsTuesday, 19 June 2018
John Eliot Gardiner was 75 in April, and to celebrate, the Barbican Centre staged a weekend devoted to his favourite composer. Gardiner himself provided the backbone of the event, three concerts of cantatas with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, while most of the other events were chamber music recitals. Read more... |
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill, Opera North, City Varieties Music Hall review - life as a cabaretMonday, 18 June 2018
Peer at the small print and it’s clear that Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill is actually a spruced-up repackaging of a show originally devised by Gene Lerner and arranger Newton Wayland, about whom Opera North’s programme tells us nothing. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Leipzig Bach Festival: a cantata blockbusterWednesday, 13 June 2018
If you ever find yourself in Leipzig at a weekend during school term, the Bach motet (and occasionally cantata) performances in the great cantor’s old church, the Thomaskirche, are an absolute must. But if you happened to be in that city this weekend just past, you will have been able to immerse yourself in practically a whole year’s worth of cantatas in the space of a little more than forty-eight hours. Read more... |
Roscoe, BBC Philharmonic, Mena, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a scenic send-offTuesday, 12 June 2018
Juanjo Mena, chief conductor of Manchester's BBC Philharmonic for the past seven years, took his official leave of them with a programme reflecting his great love, the music of his Spanish homeland. Read more... |
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