mon 11/11/2024

Classical Reviews

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice

That in itself was enough to tell us that Petrenko isn’t just a supremely elegant conductor, an easy stylist able to make Stravinsky’s fiddly early Scherzo fantastique sound natural and to paper over the cracks of a tottering soloist, Oleg Marshev, in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, but...

Read more...

Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan

In 1932 English pianist Harriet Cohen commissioned the best of Britain’s composers – Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Walton, Howells – to produce transcriptions of Bach for piano. The result, A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen, is a true document of its time, no less fascinating for its rather conservative contents. Conservative is not an adjective that could be directed at Angela Hewitt’s 20th-century reinvention of the project however. With composers including Brett Dean and Robin Holloway...

Read more...

Mustonen, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Because it was the capricious Finn who got us going and provided us with the evening's only chunks of nourishment. His performance of Rodion Shchedrin's Fourth Piano Concerto was joyous and thrilling.

Read more...

Turnage 50th birthday, CBSO Centre, Birmingham

stephen Walsh

Hard to believe that Mark-Anthony Turnage, the bovver-booted, tank-topped composer of Night Dances and Greek in the 1980s, has reached his half-century. The Essex-boy image is still intact, somewhat mellowed perhaps; the boots have gone, the tank top remains, and the music has lost not one iota of its original brilliance and pizzazz.

Read more...

Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Denève, Edinburgh & Glasgow

David Nice Stéphane Denève, bringing poise to Berlioz that only made it seem the stranger

It's always tough sharing a programme with Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Could a promising 21st-century composer and a dream-dance concerto of the early 1930s begin to make the kind of sounds the visionary Frenchman conjured in 1830? Not a chance, especially since Stéphane Denève, who had taken his now fizzing...

Read more...

Steven Isserlis, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Viviane Hagner, Wigmore Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

First, an admission. I have a blindspot for the chamber work of Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Ravel. I've tried my best, acquainted myself with the most stirring recordings of the finest pieces, got friends to hold my hand. But I've never been able to shake off the feeling that these French composers are mostly a bit drippy in this genre, a bit Watercolour Challenge, a bit I-eat-yoghurt-vote-Lib-Dem-and-don't-have-much-of-a-pulse. So last night was laser-eye-treatment time.

Read more...

Elgar: The Man Behind the Mask, BBC Four

David Nice

Where is the real Elgar to be found – in his boisterous self-portrait at the end of the Enigma Variations, the warm, feminine sentiment of the Violin Concerto and the First Symphony’s Adagio, or the nightmares of the Second Symphony? No doubt in each of them, and more. John Bridcut’s painfully sensitive documentary hones in on the private, introspective Elgar, the dark knight of "ghosts and shadows", always with the music to the fore. And by getting the good and great, young and old...

Read more...

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, St David's Hall, Cardiff

stephen Walsh Piero di Cosimo: 'The Fight Between the Lapiths and the Centaurs'

How much do you know about centaurs? Probably you know they are horses below the withers, human above. But did you know they were heavy drinkers who once got out of hand at the wedding of the King of the Lapiths, tried to rape the bride and got beaten up for their pains?

Read more...

Kafka Fragments, Barbican Hall

alexandra Coghlan Dog eat dog: 'David Michalek's images dominate the projected backdrop'

A 70-minute song cycle for soprano and violin, the Kafka Fragments is the magnum opus (the irony of its miniature forms seems entirely deliberate) of György Kurtág, a composer known for the inscrutability of his music. His lines arrive at the ears fully armed, unwilling to surrender their meaning. A performance of the Fragments at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 2008 famously drove a musically literate audience from the room, so can Peter Sellars's staged...

Read more...

Sir Charles Mackerras Memorial Concert, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice Sir Charles Mackerras during rehearsals for his final Philharmonia concert last December

In the last year of his life he was, as a colleague noted when we learned of Charles Mackerras’s death, the wise old gamekeeper in the spring forest of Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen. No wonder Mackerras, we were told last night by his conductor nephew Alexander Briger, wanted that most ecstatic celebration of...

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, BBC One review - handso...

“Previously on Wolf Hall…” It’s been nine years since Claire Foy memorably trembled her way to the block as Anne Boleyn,...

Andrej Power, LSO, Mäkelä, Barbican review - singing, shriek...

Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in...

Burnt Up Love, Finborough Theatre review - scorching new pla...

Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost...

Album: Tomorrow X Together - The Star Chapter: Sanctuary

South Korean quintet TXT's latest mini-album delivers six meticulously crafted tracks that showcase the group's evolving artistry through...

Bird review - travails of an unseen English tween

There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Yardbirds - The Ultimate Live at...

“The last we had was a bit of a flop. I own up about it, it was quite bad.” Speaking to the BBC’s Brian Matthew on 4 April 1967, Yardbirds’...

Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring/common ground[s], Sadler’s...

It takes a lot to make an audience not want to head to the bar at the interval. But the preparation of the stage floor for The Rite of Spring...

Mailley-Smith, Piccadilly Sinfonietta, St Mary-le-Strand rev...

Until 2022, the lovely 18th century church of St Mary-le-Strand was a traffic island, ignored and unloved and rarely visited. Then came...

Le Vent du Nord, Cecil Sharp House review - five extraordina...

Among the many things that make the folk community such a warm and welcoming “family” is that you know which side you’re all on, to paraphrase the...