Classical Reviews
Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich, BarbicanMonday, 09 May 2011
Sometimes you can leave a concert feeling slightly shortchanged: a perceived weakness in the programming; an unprepared, lacklustre conductor; a phoned-in performance. No danger of any of the above at the marathon session three of Reverberations, a weekend of concerts at LSO St Luke's and the Barbican devoted to the music and influence of the contemporary US composer Steve Reich. Read more... |
Seeing is Believing, Aurora Orchestra via Guardian Online Live StreamSunday, 08 May 2011
Its advertised centre of gravity, a concerto specially commissioned from affable whiz-kid Nico Muhly, turned out weightless, and not in a good way. Yet the programming of the Aurora Orchestra's latest adventure showed us why the Arts Council were right to fund this young and dynamic constellation. OK, so I'd have been happiest... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: De Sabata, Scarlatti, Violin/Viola DuetsFriday, 06 May 2011
This week we’ve offbeat violin and viola duets played by a renowned husband-and-wife duo, Scarlatti keyboard sonatas played on piano, and a very Italian take on Shakespeare from one of the 20th century’s fieriest conductors. Read more... |
Brewer, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 04 May 2011
In a London Philharmonic season playing safer than before, principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski has earned the right to a few meat-and-two-veg programmes. Even in a concert containing more than a handful of your hundred best tunes, Wagnerian carrots and Straussian greens were presented pleasingly al dente, with a prelude to this crack team's longest ever impending Glyndebourne journey and the most secure of all living dramatic sopranos soaring assuredly. And Jurowski always serves... Read more... |
Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Koenigs, St David's Hall, CardiffSaturday, 30 April 2011
Popping up on royal wedding day from the Niebelheim where they spend most of their working life, the WNO Orchestra brought with them a birth-and-death programme: hatch and dispatch, rather than match. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll was a thank-you present to Cosima for their baby son, born out of wedlock; Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony turned into an epitaph for Wagner when he died in 1883, though most of it was written while he was still alive but ailing.
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Classical CDs Weekly: Górecki, Haydn, Shostakovich, Second Viennese SchoolFriday, 29 April 2011
It’s string-quartet Saturday – a young German group tackle Soviet classics and a rejuvenated Russian quartet smile with Haydn. There’s music from a contemporary Polish master and exquisitely uncomfortable fin-de-siècle music from Vienna. Read more... |
London Schools Symphony Orchestra, Segerstam, Barbican HallThursday, 28 April 2011
With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's munificent wing. But last night was more than just another fun concert. Read more... |
Alexander Melnikov, Wigmore HallTuesday, 26 April 2011
How important is it to hear “the composer’s intentions” at a concert? Maybe only the interpreter’s intentions are possible. The young Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov challenges the golden rule of faithfulness to source with the resources of today’s piano - not the ropey old Soviet thing Shostakovich would have had, or the limited piano Schubert would have known, and last night at the Wigmore Hall delivered an ear-opener of a recital all about modern pianism at its most fascinating and... Read more... |
Rites: 3D, CBSO, Volkov, Royal Festival HallMonday, 25 April 2011
Were the great Diaghilev alive today, surely he’d be working in the imaginative possibilities of electronic technology - this was the opinion given me by the arts panjandrum, the late Sir John Drummond. And given the developments of 3D, who knows? Would it be this manipulation of our perceptions that fascinated him? 3D is certainly everywhere in dance now, though the challenge is to leap the judgment of it as merely a gimmick. I reckon while Wim Wenders’ film Pina 3D achieved... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Haydn, Gershwin, Ciccolini, SheherazadeFriday, 22 April 2011
Today we’ve Easter-themed music from Haydn and a rare chance to hear some delectable Grieg played by an old master. A kitsch Russian classic is given a new slant, and two Italians have serious fun with Gershwin. Read more... |
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