Classical Reviews

The Dark Mirror: Zender's Winterreise, Barbican Theatre

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 13 May 2016

Elasticity is a surprisingly reliable test for great art. How far can you stretch, bend, or reshape a work before it loses its essence, its identity? Hamlet, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Antigone, Pride and Prejudice can all take almost anything you can throw at them, but what about Winterreise, Schubert’s song-cycle of lost love?

Andsnes, LSO, Flor, Barbican

Peter Quantrill Monday, 09 May 2016

Laid low by a bug, Daniel Harding had to withdraw at the last minute from conducting the LSO last night. Booked as the soloist, Leif Ove Andsnes stepped into the breach to lead Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 from the piano, as the composer would have done. His unruffled keyboard technique and unimpeachably neat phrasing betrayed no sign of hasty preparation.

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Coote, CBSO, Wilson, Symphony Hall Birmingham

Richard Bratby Saturday, 07 May 2016

Can it be true? Was this really the CBSO’s first performance of Bax’s The Garden of Fand? OK, Bax is hardly mainstream repertoire, and if Oramo or Rattle had conducted it, someone would have remembered. Further back in the orchestra’s 96-year history, though, surely Adrian Boult or George Weldon must have been tempted? The records are vague...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Cindy Cox, Nielsen

graham Rickson Saturday, 07 May 2016

Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9 Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Middle Temple Hall

David Nice Tuesday, 03 May 2016

You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to adorn the text with Mendelssohn's bewitching incidental music, plus the Overture composed 16 years earlier – certainly the most perfect masterpiece ever written by a 17-year-old.

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Zuev, LPO, Jurowski, RFH

David Nice Monday, 02 May 2016

It often sounds as though Richard Strauss makes the ascent of his Alpine Symphony in too many layers of clothes. Hopes were that Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra would give us a characteristically sinewy, more lightly-clad mountaineer. What we got was something different: a perfect blending of rich textures, an objectivity that left humans more or less out of the natural landcapes, and an often swift expedition that gave space to climaxes.

Piau, Les Talens Lyriques, Rousset, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 01 May 2016

La Follia was, as every programme note inevitably reminds us, a pop song of its day. A strutting Spanish dance, it featured in the work of over 150 composers, so catchy was its signature chord progression. Still a classic of Baroque concert programmes, it’s a great way to take the temperature of any given performance. At its best, it can have even a sedate audience stamping and swaying, thrilled by those grinding syncopations and that heartbeat pulse.

Tharaud, CBSO, Volkov, Symphony Hall Birmingham

Richard Bratby Friday, 29 April 2016

Left, alone, Hans Abrahamsen’s new piano concerto for the left hand, swirls out of the darkness to a jagged motor rhythm. Piano and orchestra clash and interlock; you’re reminded of Prokofiev and Ravel. Then something happens. A piano plays, but the soloist is motionless. It’s been there all the time, of course – an orchestral piano, up on the percussion risers.

Glennie, Ticciati, O/Modernt Kammarorkester, Kings Place

David Nice Thursday, 28 April 2016

It is a truth not widely acknowledged in the UK as yet that Robin Ticciati's elder brother Hugo is no less fine a shaper of musical thought. He could, as his solo playing last night richly proved, have had a career as a virtuoso violinist playing with all the world's great orchestras.

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Atkins, SCO, Knussen, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

David Kettle Monday, 25 April 2016

Edinburgh audiences can, it has to be said, be frustratingly unadventurous. Which no doubt accounts for the relatively light turnout for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s quietly fizzing Queen’s Hall concert under conductor Oliver Knussen, three quarters of whose music was written after 1945. What any absentees missed, however, was a gloriously passionate evening of crisp, energetic music making.