Classical Reviews

Prom 69: Cleveland Orchestra, Welser-Möst

Geoff Brown Tuesday, 09 September 2014

Is there something about the start of a new cultural season, or indeed the Proms, that make classical music’s conductors rush to jump ship? Consider this. Last Friday, two days before his pair of Prom concerts with his American outfit, the Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst, so diffident on the outside, resigned from his important European post as the Vienna State Opera’s music director with immediate effect. Irreconcilable artistic differences were cited.

Prom 66: St Matthew Passion, Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 07 September 2014

Peter Sellars’ work used to be about making a statement. He would dislocate texts from contexts, subvert musical suggestion and ignore written statement for the sheer joy of the artistic friction it would generate. The beauty of his St Matthew Passion staging however, first seen in 2010, is that it does nothing of the sort.

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A Season at the Juilliard School, Sky Arts 2

David Nice Sunday, 07 September 2014

“You feel like you’re walking into Fame, the movie,“ says one of three third-year drama students towards the beginning of this six-part documentary. That’s what we might have hoped of what, at least in the first episode, turns out to be a mere infomercial for New York’s prestigious academy of performing arts.

DiDonato, Pappano, Wigmore Hall

Sebastian Scotney Sunday, 07 September 2014

For the first night of its 114th season, the dear old Wiggy welcomed back its regulars after the summer break. A starry occasion like this recital by Joyce DiDonato and Sir Antonio Pappano gets booked out virtually exclusively by those patrons and members, so it was an evening with a lot of air-kissing and greeting across the familiar rows of red seats.

Comment

Prom 64: Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle

David Nice Saturday, 06 September 2014

After Monday’s Respighi extravaganza at the Proms, it was back on the rainbow express for more wonders of orchestral colour last night. In the young Stravinsky’s large-scale signing-in and poor depressed old Rachmaninov’s signing-off, you could trust Sir Simon Rattle’s Berlin army of generals to turn in any amount of subtle colours.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Grieg, Mahler, Choir of Gonville & Caius College

graham Rickson Saturday, 06 September 2014

Façade/Eight Songs for a Mad King, Grimeborn Opera, Arcola Theatre

Bernard Hughes Friday, 05 September 2014

Walton’s Façade is not performed very often in London, but this weekend there is the opportunity to hear it four days in a row: on Monday at a chamber Prom, but before that in this enterprising staging, paired with Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King.

Prom 63: McAllister, BBCSO, Alsop

Matthew Wright Friday, 05 September 2014

Conductor Marin Alsop was welcomed like Britannia herself at last night’s concert, an astute partnership of John Adams’ vivacious hybridism and Gustav Mahler’s colourful patchwork quilt of a symphony.

Proms Chamber Music 7: Benjamin Grosvenor/Prom 60: Driver, RPO, Dutoit

David Nice Tuesday, 02 September 2014

After the enervating excesses of Salome and Elektra at the weekend, the abundance of notes at the Proms continued in a piano recital and an orchestral showstopper, but this time with built-in air conditioning. After all, both 22-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor and septuagenarian Charles Dutoit are absolutely in control of the colours they make, very occasionally too much so.

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Volkov, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Christopher Lambton Sunday, 31 August 2014

It is the fate of Edinburgh Festival directors to programme their music in the considerable shadow cast by the Proms in London. The undeniable economics of large scale touring means that few orchestras will visit Edinburgh alone, so to attract all-important critical attention the Festival must somehow manipulate a limited touring repertoire to create a unique Scottish event.