Classical Reviews
Sophie Daneman, Apollo's Fire: Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, Wigmore HallWednesday, 01 December 2010
Visits from the pick of Europe’s Baroque orchestras – Concerto Köln, Europa Galante, Le Concert d’Astree, Les Musiciens du Louvre – are a blissfully frequent occurrence in London, an alternative and supplement to our own ever-growing roster of period talent. A tour by a North American ensemble is, by contrast, something of a rarity, and I can’t have been alone last night in hearing the much-lauded Apollo's Fire (otherwise known as the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra) live for the first time. “... Read more... |
Julia Fischer, Martin Helmchen, Queen Elizabeth HallTuesday, 30 November 2010
An entire evening of Schumann for two would usually cue singer and piano. Not that the majority of Lieder specialists, blessed as naughty Anna Russell once saw it "with tremendous artistry but no voice", could hold the spell for that long. Julia Fischer is one of the half-dozen violinists in the world with the greatest artistry, a golden "voice" and a habit of choosing partners like Martin Helmchen, very much on her level. The only trouble is that Schumann songs can capture a world in 90... Read more... |
The Risør Festival at the Wigmore HallSunday, 28 November 2010
A hell of a lot of talent was on display last night at the Wigmore Hall, where pianist Leif Ove Andsnes's home festival of Risør was stationed for the weekend. The big draw was a performance of The Rite of Spring for two pianos. The work is violent enough in orchestral form but when jammed onto two keyboards it has the potential to degenerate into the most unimaginably demented hand-to-hand combat you'll ever see. Last night's performance - Andsnes facing off against a man that...
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Mingardo, Gritton, The English Concert, Bicket, BarbicanSaturday, 27 November 2010
Before Mozart, there was Pergolesi. The 18th century couldn't get enough of the Neapolitan prodigy. He was the first great tragic musical wünderkind of the Enlightenment, prefiguring what Mozart would become for the 19th century. Like Mozart, Pergolesi died prematurely aged just 26. Like Mozart, Pergolesi was a musical simplifier and distiller, a divine and revolutionary sieve. Like Mozart, Pergolesi's popularity spawned an industry dedicated to mythologising his life and...
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Juanita Lascarro, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore HallThursday, 25 November 2010
Perhaps I’m being too literal-minded, but demanding South American music from a concert programme advertised as “South American Baroque” doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. When you add Colombian-born soprano Juanita Lascarro as soloist and Brazilian Rodolfo Richter as leader it seems actively desirable – a chance to encounter an underexposed seam of music in the hands of expert guides. Turns out that all musical roads lead back to Europe, to the ubiquitous Scarlattis, Handel and Hasse, and... Read more... |
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko, Royal Festival HallThursday, 25 November 2010
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 HallSunday, 21 November 2010
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 HallSaturday, 20 November 2010
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. |
Turnage 50th birthday, CBSO Centre, BirminghamMonday, 15 November 2010
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 & GlasgowSunday, 14 November 2010
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... |
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