sun 09/02/2025

Classical Reviews

Nash Ensemble, Drapers' Hall, City of London Festival

David Nice

It takes a lot to humanise the hideous late-Victorian glitter of Drapers' Hall, but the City of London Festival's latest cornucopia knew how. Ornithologist-composer David Lumsdaine's soundscape greeted us with Australian birds fluttering invisibly around Corinthian gilt. Then it was down to business with the Nash Ensemble's small band of personable generals. They gave us high-toned Grieg and Dvořák, cheerful homespun songs with sophisticated twists by Grainger, Vaughan Williams and Delius to...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Dvořák, Rózsa, Xenakis

graham Rickson Roger Woodward: Undaunted by Xenakis

An unreleased live recording from a much missed conductor provides heartwarming food for the soul, while another podium giant brings musicality to uncompromising Modernism, aided by a phenomenal pianist. Meanwhile, a Hungarian exile in Hollywood takes a break from composing film scores and thinks of home.

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Le Cercle de L'Harmonie, Rhorer, Barbican Hall

alexandra Coghlan Jeremie Rhorer: A fine musical pedigree but a lacklustre performance

While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic champions of the genre, if we were all stuck in a sinking hot air balloon I’d lose both before sacrificing Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Concert d'Astrée or Les Arts Florissants. So it was with anticipation that I made my way to the...

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Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall

David Nice

Profound experience of 2010? For me, unquestionably, portions of the great Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja's first-time journey through all the Schubert sonatas at the Verbier Festival. I was lucky to catch three out of nine recitals, and to talk to her about Schubert. I'd have been happy to listen again to any of those extraordinary works - all 19 are loveably idiosyncratic - in London. But this was a strand of unusual radiance I hadn't caught at Verbier embracing, as ever, Schubert's...

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Colin Currie, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, CBSO, BCMG, Oliver Knussen, Aldeburgh Festival

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Yesterday afternoon's final concert at the Aldeburgh Festival saw an astonishing world premiere. A major new double concerto from a 102-year-old Elliott Carter. Imagine Schubert premiering a song cycle in 1900, or Van Gogh unveiling a self-portrait in 1956. Gob-smacking stuff.
 

So what sort of music does a man born before Benjamin Britten have to offer 2011? Music of an amazingly energetic bent, it transpires.

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Joanna MacGregor, Wigmore Hall/ Sol Picó, Sadler's Wells Theatre

Ismene Brown Joanna MacGregor: She turned Bach and Shostakovich into something like electronic piano music

The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor hour spent at contemporary dance in Sadler’s Wells was offset by an hour with Joanna MacGregor in a stimulating splicing of Bach and Shostakovich piano music that at least offered something to think about, if not ultimate satisfaction. Evening...

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Light Fantastic, BBCSO, Wilson, Royal Festival Hall/BBC Radio 3

David Nice John Wilson: Taking light music to the highest level

If Eric Coates’s Knightsbridge March is good enough for Gergiev, who conducted it as a saving-grace encore of a very messy World Orchestra for Peace Prom in 2005 (17 orchestral leaders in the first violins, not a happy gambit), then it’s certainly worth the time of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and one of its biggest sound-shapers. Bright spark...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Ince, Previn, Rossini

graham Rickson Julia Lezhneva: Her extraordinary voice belies her youth

This week we’ve a grandiose choral work inspired by a composer’s love for the beautiful game, along with two noisily enjoyable attempts to portray physical movement in musical terms. A frighteningly young Russian soprano’s debut recital is released - a selection of flamboyant Rossini arias accompanied by a famous period instrument specialist. And there's the first recording of a new opera based on a terribly, terribly English story, composed by an American musician fondly regarded in the UK...

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BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, St David's Hall

stephen Walsh

The Cardiff Singer of the World may or may not be (as several of this year’s competitors seemed to think) the most important voice competition in the universe, but it must surely be the nicest. The Welsh really do believe, perhaps rightly, that they invented singing; and to hear the whole St David’s Hall uplifted in “Land of My Fathers” at the end of Sunday’s final was a heartwarming experience – almost as much as to see the four losing finalists applauding the winner, the Moldovan soprano...

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BBC Symphony Orchestra, Renes, Spitalfields Music

David Nice

Everyone in the BBCSO is a potential soloist. I know this because the course I run at the City Literary Institute linked to the orchestra has welcomed principals, duos, two string quartets and three viola foursomes (proving that department the most individual, not the dense deserving butt of many a joke). I adore these players, but I love Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony even more, so this was bound to be a gem.

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