Classical Reviews
The Dream of Gerontius, RSNO, Oundjian, Usher Hall, EdinburghSunday, 31 May 2015
To close its 2014-15 season the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chose the choral masterpiece that Elgar preferred not to call an oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius. Performances in Scotland are rare, whether this is because of Presbyterian unease with Catholic sentiment, or the unfashionable nature of big-bottomed Anglican choral textures, it is difficult to say. North of the border we are more likely to turn to Brahms’ German Requiem for spiritual consolation. Read more...
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Schubert Sonatas 2, Barenboim, RFHSaturday, 30 May 2015
Personality is essential for Schubert’s piano sonatas. Listen to two recordings of the same one and you could easily think they are different works, such is the performer's input. Daniel Barenboim would therefore seem ideal. He’s a huge personality – he even has his own name emblazoned in large gold letters on the lid of his piano: a personality verging on a cult. Read more... |
Schubert Sonatas 1, Barenboim, RFHThursday, 28 May 2015
It’s not often that you arrive for a piano recital to see members of the audience on the stage, clustering around the instrument and taking photos of it. Those curious about the newly unveiled, straight-strung Barenboim-Maene concert grand (the name above the keyboard is simply BARENBOIM) were periodically ushered away from it; it was closed and reopened several times before it was time for the maestro himself to take control. Read more... |
Ehnes, Armstrong, Wigmore HallWednesday, 27 May 2015
Violinists either fathom the elusive heart and soul of Elgar’s music or miss the mark completely. Canadian James Ehnes, one of the most cultured soloists on the scene today, is the only one I’ve heard since Nigel Kennedy to make the Violin Concerto work in concert, in an equally rare total partnership with Elgarian supreme Andrew Davis and the Philharmonia. Read more... |
Tetzlaff, LSO, Harding, BarbicanMonday, 25 May 2015
With Kavakos, Faust, Shaham and Skride already been and gone, and Jansen, Ehnes, Bell and Ibragimova still to come, the LSO’s International Violin Festival has nothing left to prove. We’re not short of star power in London’s concert scene, but even by our spoilt metropolitan standards this is a pretty unarguable line-up. With excellence a given, then, it takes quite a lot to startle a crowd into delight – especially on a Sunday night. Read more... |
Kozhukhin, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSunday, 24 May 2015
No two symphonic swansongs could be more different than Sibelius’s heart-of-darkness Tapiola and Nielsen’s enigmatically joky Sixth Symphony. In its evasive yet organic jumpiness, the Danish composer’s anything but “Simple Symphony” – the Sixth’s subtitle – seemed last night to have most in common with another work from the mid-1920s, Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Shostakovich, Henrik SchwarzSaturday, 23 May 2015
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Leçons de Ténèbres, Devine, St John's Smith SquareTuesday, 19 May 2015
This penultimate night of the London (formally Lufthansa) Festival of Baroque Music brought beautiful, intelligent, superbly musical singing from two sopranos Julia Doyle and Grace Davidson, who sang early 18th century works by François Couperin: two exultatory motets, a Magnificat and the Leçons de Ténèbres. Read more... |
The Creation, SCO, Christophers, Usher Hall, EdinburghSunday, 17 May 2015
For the Scottish Chamber Orchestra the transition from its home in the Queen’s Hall to the much larger spaces of Usher Hall is not always a happy one. Earlier this season an experimental performance of Mahler’s fourth symphony lacked heft in the larger Edinburgh venue, for this listener at least, but would have swamped the smaller. Many disagreed. Read more... |
Connolly, West, BBCSO, Davis, BarbicanSaturday, 16 May 2015
From the strings’ first entry, sweet and mysterious, conveying at once the erotic charge between Berlioz's Dido and Aeneas, its long-suppressed unfolding and also its transience, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played like a dream for their conductor laureate Sir Andrew Davis. Read more... |
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