Classical Reviews
AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, Penderecki, Barbican HallFriday, 23 March 2012
I don't much like aspirational music-making. I like my classical classical and my pop pop. Give me Boulez over Bernstein, Britney over Radiohead, any day. Having said that, I'd heard a piece by Jonny Greenwood at Reverb last month that had gone some way to winning me over. For a brief moment, Greenwood dropped the avant-garde pose that he's adopted for most of his other classical compositions and indulged in a bit of tender-hearted Romanticism that was nothing if not charming. Read more... |
Kaufmann, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, BirminghamThursday, 08 March 2012
There was a lovely narrative to last night's CBSO concert. Read more... |
Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 07 March 2012
Their bicentennial years may have been and gone, but even Mazeppa’s wild horse wouldn’t be able to stop the world’s top pianists playing Chopin and Liszt almost every month. Last night Maurizio Pollini and his aristocratic art returned to the Royal Festival Hall for a recital featuring both composers, each on either side of the interval. Read more... |
AV Festival, Newcastle/ Heiner Goebbels's Surrogate Cities, RFH/ London Contemporary Orchestra, Brunt, The RoundhouseMonday, 05 March 2012
It's often more fun on the margins. The pickings are richer. The view is clearer. You can take aim easier. The AV Festival has spent more than eight years here, on the counter-cultural edges, delving into the divisional cracks between art, music and film. Read more... |
Evgeny Kissin, Barbican HallSaturday, 03 March 2012
For more than 10 years now I have been waiting in vain for the pianist Evgeny Kissin to shatter the stereotyped image built around him by music critics who haven’t always liked what they’ve heard. Read more... |
Lindberg, Cowen, RLPO, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolFriday, 02 March 2012
There’s always a bit of a buzz around a premiere, even one which may seem slightly off-the-wall. Jan Sandström’s Echoes of Eternity is a concerto for two solo trombones – unusual in itself, given that there are precious few concerti for just one solo trombone – and symphony orchestra. Add to that the fact that one of the soloists is also the conductor and it’s easy to see that this piece is beginning to get complicated. Read more... |
Bell, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 23 February 2012
Despite the best attempts of Stephen Johnson’s programme notes to create synthesis from last night’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert, there was something rather smash and grab about the programming. It was as though Jurowski, suddenly inspired to play classical Supermarket Sweep, had emerged with a disparate trolley-load of Zemlinsky, Mozart and Szymanowski – oh, and the Brahms Violin Concerto. Read more... |
Mutter, London Symphony Orchestra, Previn, Barbican HallMonday, 20 February 2012
It’s over 30 years since André Previn left his post as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. But once you’re part of the LSO’s treasured ‘family of artists’, the orchestra never lets go, year upon year inviting you back for Christmas, New Year, weddings, bar mitzvahs, any occasion going. The same with the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter – briefly in the last decade Previn’s fifth wife, though they share the same platform with just as much ease now that they’re divorced. Read more... |
Roméo et Juliette: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Elder, Royal Festival HallSunday, 19 February 2012
It's one of the fundamental rules of concert-going that in any given season there will be one piece that trips you up. And that piece will always be by Berlioz. Read more... |
New York Philharmonic, Gilbert, BarbicanFriday, 17 February 2012
The problem with being the closest major European capital to the United States is that touring American orchestras always visit us first or last. When they hit London, they're exhausted. This was very noticeable the first time the New York Philharmonic dropped by with their new chief conductor Alan Gilbert a few years back. They were a pale and baggy-eyed lot compared to the alert team I'd seen and heard just a few months before in New York. Read more... |
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