Classical music
igor.toronyilalic
Three hundred years ago we danced and ate to art music. Before that we worshipped to it. In the 19th century we began to sit and stare at it. The immersive music movement of the past decade has moved things along again. Today we are encouraged to swim through performances, sniffing the music out, hunting it down. The latest ensemble to free themselves from the sit-and-stare model are the enterprising outfit, the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO). For their concert on Friday we had to go down 200-odd steps into the labyrinths of the disused station at Aldwych. It was well worth the effort. Read more ...
David Nice
Let me confess: I had to return to lovely Göttingen as much for the frogs as for the Handel. Puffing out their throats like bubblegum, the amphibians' brekekekek chorus in the ponds of the great university’s botanic gardens actually made a more spectacular showing, in my books, than the main opera of this year’s Handel Festival, the 93rd, with its canny theme linking the German honorary Englishman with the Orient. Not even the effervescent Laurence Cummings in his second wonderful year as festival director could kiss the mostly humdrum Siroe, Re di Persia into a prince. But Cummings’ contacts Read more ...
David Nice
In 1980, an orchestra and conductor then hardly known in Britain came to the Royal Festival Hall. I went to hear Elisabeth Söderström in Strauss’s Four Last Songs; I left stunned by an unorthodox Sibelius Second Symphony and above all by one of the encores, Cantus to the Memory of Benjamin Britten by one Arvo Pärt. Thirty three years later Neeme Järvi, now indisputably one of the great master conductors and at the helm of a Swiss orchestra rather than the Swedes he’d then conducted (the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra), not only began with a work by fellow Estonian Pärt but also ended Read more ...
graham.rickson
Frank Martin: Das Märchen vom Aschenbrödel Orchestre de la Haute École de Musique de Genève/Gábor Takács-Nagy (Claves)Prokofiev’s three-act Cinderella ballet score remains one of his greatest creations. It’s so impressive that you’re incredulous to learn that there exists another account – written by the Swiss composer Frank Martin in 1942. It was successfully performed in Basel in 1942, conducted by the great Paul Sacher, before slipping into total obscurity. Martin based his scenario on the Grimm brothers’ darker Aschenputtel rather than the more familiar Charles Perrault version. It’ Read more ...
graham.rickson
Schumann and his Daughters Florian Uhlig (piano) (Hänssler Classic)Hearing this fifth volume in the young German pianist Florian Uhlig’s ongoing Schumann series made me want to investigate the earlier issues. Rather than plough through the music chronologically, each CD is arranged thematically, this one being devoted to works written for the composer’s three daughters. Parents of children learning to play the piano will know how hard it is to find easy pieces which are both musically and technically satisfying. Schumann felt the same back in the 1840s, resolving to produce his own Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The return of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music to London each year always heralds the beginning of summer. Granted this beginning is usually damp and decidedly chilly, but there’s a hopefulness in the air that things might be about to change. And this sense of hopefulness doesn’t end with the weather. Under Lindsay Kemp the festival’s programming is reliably wide-ranging and joyful, a proper celebration of the landmarks and the paths-less-trodden of the baroque repertoire.Last night’s concert had the appeal of being both a major work and one decidedly neglected in contemporary Read more ...
graham.rickson
Grainger: Works for Large Chorus and Orchestra Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (Chandos)Here's a welcome postscript to Chandos’s mammoth Grainger Edition – one of the best, wackiest box sets out there. This new anthology of rarities for chorus and orchestra has the added advantage of having been recorded in Melbourne, and the performances are consistently successful. The works themselves are of variable quality though; Grainger’s output could be maddeningly inconsistent. Here, the high spots are magnificent. Few composers were such brilliant arrangers, and Grainger can Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Old instruments have found young champions this week in two very different concerts and contexts. In the Wigmore Hall, Mahan Esfahani continued his persuasive rehabilitation of the harpsichord, showcasing not only the expressive range of the instrument itself but – more unusually – its repertoire, in music from Byrd to Ligeti. Meanwhile out in Richmond young singer-songwriter Joseph Reuben took a string quartet on a stylistic journey, blending classical textures and processes with an indie-pop sensibility to create a thoughtful fusion.Hailed by Esfahani as “the liberator of the harpsichord”, Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
The Barbican Hall’s house lights faded to black, with just the soft glow of music stand lamps on stage as the Britten Sinfonia filed on and eased into the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Directed from leader’s desk by Jacqueline Shave, the orchestra gave an exquisite account of the piece, the chamber aesthetic and necessary communication between players somehow helping to draw the audience in. It was certainly a rewarding alternative to the lusher – and slushier – version one would hear from a full symphony orchestra’s worth of strings.It was a nice theatrical touch to begin the Read more ...
David Nice
Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and Broadway to another enthusiasm, tuneful British music. Yet who merits them better than he?His brand of hectic brilliance was sometimes too much for the Barbican Hall’s magnifying tendencies, but a keen-sprung technique – a word not used enough in culinary TV – leapt over some of the gloopier hurdles in an overture by Walton and a swoony concerto by York Bowen. With Vaughan Williams’s Five Tudor Portraits Read more ...