Classical Reviews
Josefowicz, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Knussen, Royal Albert HallThursday, 29 July 2010
"Stockhausen's festive overture from 1977 opens the programme," declared the Proms website cheerily. Come again? Festive? Stockhausen? From my limited but largely enthusiastic knowledge of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen - much of which is about as festive as Auschwitz - I assumed that this must either be a big misunderstanding or a lively, perhaps German, joke. It was both. Read more...
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Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi, Hahn, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 28 July 2010
If the bust of Sir Henry Wood that watches over the stage of the Royal Albert Hall had come to life, Commendatore-like, during last night’s concert, I can’t help feel that he would have been smiling. Beethoven nights – once a popular Proms fixture – have lately fallen off the calendar, but alongside various nods to tradition have this year returned. Read more... |
Zacharias, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert HallMonday, 26 July 2010
The Proms listings are full of concerts a bit like the one last night that seem to offer up, on paper, little of real burning interest: no big names, no star foreign orchestras, no intriguing rarities, no new works, nothing beyond one hard-working BBC orchestra and a few staple classics (a Strauss family waltz-medley and some Schumann) that could be rattled off by any professional orchestra blindfold. Be warned: these are the concerts that are most likely to transfigure your evening, stir...
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Goerner, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 24 July 2010
"Well, that's going straight onto my iPod!" declared my friend at the interval. Introduce anyone to Scriabin's lush Piano Concerto in F sharp minor - a real concert rarity - and the response is always the same: love at first sight. The tunes, the tenderness, the surging passion are all there in Rachmaninov-like abundance. And even if these qualities often come at the price of structural elegance, there is no denying the romantic potency of the work. I bet there was a surge of downloading...
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Lewis, BBCSO, Bělohlávek; Pires, Royal Albert HallThursday, 22 July 2010
Two pianists, one indisputably great and the other probably destined to become so, lined up last night to show us why the Proms at its best is a true festival, not just a gaggle of summer concerts. First there was the prince of pearly classicism, Paul Lewis, consolidating the democratic Beethoven he’s already established on CD withJiří Bělohlávek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Read more... |
theartsdesk in York: York Early Music FestivalTuesday, 20 July 2010
York is a bit like Oxford, I’ve always thought: that perplexing contrast between the central squares and marketplaces, in all their twee glory – all aimless, besatchelled French students and anoraked tourists queuing for tea at Betty’s – and the simply glorious architecture and hidden back streets, from the ever-breathtaking splendour of the Minster to the endless succession of tiny hidden churches that inhabit every other corner. You could, potentially, hate it, but you always come... Read more... |
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Petrenko, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 20 July 2010
What a thrilling sound the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra can make when it chooses! What a grippingly deep tone, from a lower strings section that sounds like you’ve got the bass on your car stereo turned up daringly high, what clinical precision (in the best sense of the word) in the wind section, what power in the brass. At times you could almost see the surges of energy shooting off into the auditorium. You could certainly hear it. |
First Night of the 2010 PromsFriday, 16 July 2010
Numerologists may have been fretting over whether Proms forces could match the apocryphal thousand of the mightiest Eighth Symphony's 1910 world premiere, which Mahler feared would turn into a "catastrophic Barnum and Bailey show". With nothing like 350 in the children's chorus, for a start, not a chance. Read more... |
Ivana Gavrić, Wigmore HallThursday, 15 July 2010
There are some recitals where you think only about the abstracted music - the harmonic arguments, the structural cleverness, the textural ingenuity - and there are others where you are forced to confront the presence of a set of living, breathing, leering musical beasts.
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Chopin Unwrapped, Martino Tirimo, Kings PlaceWednesday, 14 July 2010
So most of us blinked and missed Martha Argerich gliding into Kings Place's Argentine celebrations last week. Yet here I am writing again about this liveliest of venues' Chopin marathon, and like a would-be Prommer who joins the last night party without having been to the Albert Hall more than once in the season I'm culpable of marking the grand finale after... Read more... |
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