Classical Reviews

Cesari, BBCSSO, Pintscher, City Halls, Glasgow

David Kettle Sunday, 10 January 2016

Forget your celebratory Messiahs and your crowd-pleasing Strauss galas. Instead of easing listeners gently into 2016 with conventional New Year fare, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra went for the shock approach in its 2016 opening concert: non-stop, back-to-back, uncompromising contemporary music. And it felt like a marvellously bracing, ear-cleansing, provocative way to kick off the year’s concerts.

Comment

Goyescas, Khamis, Houston, National Gallery

David Nice Saturday, 09 January 2016

"I fell in love with the psychology of Goya and his palette,” wrote brilliant composer-pianist Enrique Granados at the beginning of an evocative paean prefacing his six original Goyescas of 1909-11, finely-wrought gems of the piano repertoire. In love, too, are most of us who have gaped with awe at the astonishing range and careful selection of portraits in the current National Gallery exhibition - one of its best ever, equal in revelation to the recent Rembrandt spectacular.

Classical CDs Weekly: Elgar, Silvestrov, Hideko Udagawa

graham Rickson Saturday, 09 January 2016

Elgar: Sea Pictures, Polonia, Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1-5 Alice Coote, Hallé/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)

Hadland / Moser Brothers, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Monday, 04 January 2016

Prokofiev milestones stood proudly at the ends of the New Year’s first three major UK concert programmes.

Scholl, Halperin, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 04 January 2016

“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.” So promise Dryden and Purcell in their hypnotic song, a high-stakes closer for Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin’s "Exquisite Love" recital. But beguiling away cares on the eve of a national return to work is a big ask, even in the other-worldly surroundings of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and something that, on this occasion, the countertenor himself couldn’t quite deliver.

Murray, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Collon, Leeds Town Hall

graham Rickson Sunday, 03 January 2016

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s standard of playing is consistently impressive, so much so that it’s easy to forget that the ensemble is effectively reconstituted from scratch each autumn. Last night’s fresh incarnation, deftly conducted by Nicholas Collon, sounded as if they’d been playing together for decades, though without any sense of complacency which that might bring.

Classical CDs Weekly: Roger Doyle, Mahler, Prokofiev

graham Rickson Saturday, 02 January 2016

Roger Doyle: Time Machine (Heresy Records)

Best of 2015: Classical Concerts

David Nice Saturday, 26 December 2015

The musical future looks bright indeed, at least from my perspective. There are more classical concerts than ever going on across the UK on most days of the year, so who can know with any authority what might have been missed? Yet each of theartsdesk’s classical music writers has a special take on the events of 2015, and part of mine has been the special privilege of following a trail of younger players in out-of-the-way places.

Best of 2015: Classical CDs

graham Rickson Saturday, 26 December 2015

Does classical music still matter? Of course it does – sample any one of these ten discs and discover why. All of them are available as CDs as well as downloads – the classical CD shop may be almost extinct, but the physical product refuses to die.

Christmas Oratorio, AAM, Egarr, Barbican

David Nice Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Relatively recent tweaks to the abundant London concert scene have resulted in top-end events right up to Christmas. We have in part to thank the seasonal festival at St John’s Smith Square, postponing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s holidays, putting them together with superb soloists and choirs, and serving up major Handel and Bach. One snag: their Christmas Oratorio when I last went to hear it turned out to be only four cantatas out of the sequence of six.