Classical Reviews
Belcea Quartet, Chamayou, Wigmore Hall review - romantic winged beast soars over neobaroque chameleonFriday, 14 April 2023
In search of relatively rare fabulous beasts like César Franck’s Piano Quintet – given a fantastical performance last night – you often have to take in the ubiquitous Shostakovich specimen, the modest work of a master using simple means to his own creative ends that doesn’t bear too much repeated listening over a short space of time. Read more... |
Gagarin Quartets, Modulus String Quartet, Brunel Museum review - a multimedia journey into spaceFriday, 14 April 2023
London concert life is infinitely varied, especially if you dig below the surface. So after spending Tuesday evening in the lofty Royal Albert Hall, on Wednesday I was 16 metres below ground, in the tunnel shaft of the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe for a multi-media event celebrating Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space, 62 years ago to the day. Read more... |
National Youth Choir, Royal Albert Hall review – a spectacular jubileeWednesday, 12 April 2023
The recently re-branded National Youth Choir was founded in 1983 as a single choir of about 100 voices, and in those 40 years has grown to be a family of four, ranging from the nine-year-olds at the bottom of the boys’ and girls’ choirs to the 25-year-olds at the top of the NYC proper. Read more... |
St John Passion, Polyphony, OAE, Layton, St John's Smith Square review - defiant performance reveals Bach masterpiece anewSaturday, 08 April 2023
The turbulence and agitation of betrayal could be felt from the word go in this galvanising performance of the St John Passion, which administered a jolting urgency to Bach’s radical portrayal of the Easter story. The work will be 300 years old next year, yet this Polyphony Good Friday performance – a fixture at St John’s Smith Square for slightly fewer years – delivered a version as fresh and discomfiting as if the crucifixion had taken place yesterday. Read more... |
Tenebrae, Short, St John’s Smith Square review - Bach and MacMillan soulfully joined, until the endFriday, 07 April 2023
Tenebrae in tenebris: put more plainly, a top choir that’s anything but shadowy, except when it needs to be, doing its bit for the darkness of Maundy Thursday. The thoughtful plaiting of Bach motets with three Tenebrae Responsories and other works by our top choral composer, James MacMillan, worked well until the last work on the programme. Then they had to go and spoil it all by premature ejaculation. Read more... |
Facade Ensemble, Collins Rice, St Margaret Pattens Church review - meditation and reflectionWednesday, 05 April 2023
The Facade Ensemble is an interesting chamber group of young players dedicated to exploring 20th repertoire, in this case John Cage, Arvo Pärt and Gavin Bryars, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year. The programme, put together by founder and conductor Benedict Collins Rice was contemplative in tone, and an interesting opportunity to hear these experimental and minimal works in a pared-down scoring. Read more... |
Messiah, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, Wigmore Hall review - wonderful, easy, light and dark in perfect poiseTuesday, 04 April 2023
This Palm Sunday served up an epiphany. Previous encounters with Handel's Messiah, in whatever version, and whether listening or performing, turned out to have been through a glass darkly. And here we were face to face with undiluted genius, served with total consistency by 26 musicians running the gamut from intimacy through fury to great blazes, all guided by the extraordinary spirit of IBO artistic director Peter Whelan. Read more... |
Chiejina, BBC Philharmonic, Collon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - something scenic, and something elseMonday, 03 April 2023
An evening of “scenic orchestral works”, according to the programme booklet, was on offer from the BBC Philharmonic on Saturday. Scenic was certainly true of the Seven Early Songs of Alban Berg and Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. But Tom Coult’s Three Pieces That Disappear was something else. Read more... |
Williams, Dunedin Consort, Truscott, Wigmore Hall review - star soprano, total teamworkFriday, 31 March 2023
When your special guest is a young soprano with all the world before her, the total artist already, your programme might seem to run itself. Read more... |
Things to Come, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - blissful visions of the futureMonday, 27 March 2023
Last night at the Barbican was my first experience of a film with live orchestra, which has become a big thing in the last few years. The film in question was Alexander Korda’s extraordinary HG Wells adaptation Things to Come, from 1936, imagining a century of the future. Read more... |
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