Classical Reviews
Feldman and Cage, Cross-Currents Festival, BirminghamFriday, 19 February 2016
One strain of American music sprang up one evening early in 1950 from a chance encounter at Carnegie Hall, where the New York Philharmonic had played Webern’s Symphony to an audience of all-too-predictably restless patrons. Both bewitched by the Webern and upset at the response, John Cage and Morton Feldman bumped into one another as they left and stayed friends for life: now they have been reunited at a day of concerts within the new music festival hosted by the University of Birmingham. Read more...
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Mahler 3, Fink, Philharmonia, Hrůša, RFHFriday, 12 February 2016
"It’s all very well, but you can’t call it a symphony". So said William Walton of Mahler’s Third, all six movements and a hundred minutes of it. Jakub Hrůša conducted the Philharmonia last night on fine if hardly infallible form in a performance notable for its restraint in a work remarkable for the excess which raised Walton’s eyebrow. Read more... |
Callow, Hough, LPO, Vänskä, RFHThursday, 11 February 2016
2015, Sibelius anniversary year, yielded no London performances of the composer's last masterpiece, the Prospero's farewell of his incidental music to The Tempest. Read more... |
Zavalloni, Saeijs, Britten Sinfonia, Rundell, BarbicanWednesday, 10 February 2016
The music of Louis Andriessen is instantly recognisable but frustratingly difficult to define. The American Minimalists are a strong influence, but so too is Stravinsky, and through him, Bach. Those figures provide the context for Andriessen’s works in the Barbican mini-festival M is for Man, Music and Mystery, which this Britten Sinfonia concert inaugurated. Read more... |
The Mighty Handful, ROH Orchestra, Pappano, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 09 February 2016
What fun it must have been to attend any of the St Petersburg Free Music School concerts during the second half of the 19th century. Read more... |
Fleming, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSaturday, 06 February 2016
Renée Fleming recently announced her imminent retirement from the opera stage. But she has no plans to stop performing, and will instead devote her time to recitals and concerts. Yesterday’s excellent performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra bodes well for her new career focus. And she’s not one to rest on her laurels, here giving UK premieres of two new works written for her voice, ever the adventurous artist, always playing to her strengths. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dutilleux, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Amy DicksonSaturday, 06 February 2016
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Kraggerud, Gimse, Wigmore HallWednesday, 03 February 2016
All three Grieg violin sonatas in a single recital may seem like too much of a good thing. The similarities between them outweigh the differences, which are more of quality than intent. But, when heard in chronological order, they provide a fascinating précis of Grieg’s artistic development, from the youthful and cheerfully unsophisticated First, through the terser and more tightly argued Second, to the Third, the composer’s undisputed masterpiece in the genre. Read more... |
Benedetti, CBSO, Shani, Saffron Hall, Saffron WaldenMonday, 01 February 2016
With Andris Nelsons now moved to pastures new, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is without a chief conductor, so for this performance in Saffron Walden (repeating a programme given in Birmingham) it worked with a guest at the podium, the young Israeli Lahav Shani. At only 27, he’s something of a prodigy, winner of the prestigious Bamberg competition and now making his debut appearances with the world’s great orchestras. Read more... |
Green Mass, LPO, Jurowski, RFHSunday, 31 January 2016
In recent performances of the First Symphony under Markus Stenz and the Seventh under Jaap van Zweden, the LPO have burnished their credentials as London’s best Beethoven orchestra. With the low-key oversight of Vladimir Jurowski, they took the Sixth to another level, perhaps the level at which the twentysomething tyro Berlioz heard the symphony and said, "I must write that for myself". And with the Symphonie fantastique, he did. Read more... |
Dutilleux: Le Loup, and other early works Vincent Le Texier (baritone), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS)Pages
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