Haydn
Simon Thompson
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra punches well above its weight when it comes to guest artists, and it was a big thing for them to have someone of the status of Alina Ibragimova as both soloist and guest director for this concert.She directed Haydn’s Drumroll Symphony (No. 103) from the leader’s chair, and wisely adopted a less-is-more approach, letting the opening drumroll (terrifically assertive from timpanist Louise Lewis Goodwin) and wind theme unfold without her observably moving a muscle. This then spilt over into a main allegro that was as bright as a button, which nonetheless allowed for Read more ...
graham.rickson
Joan Sutherland: The Complete Decca Recordings - Operas 1959-1970 (Decca)The legend of "La Stupenda" was born at Covent Garden in 1959, when Joan Sutherland sang and – by all accounts – acted her socks off as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. But she had been singing roles at the Royal Opera for seven years already – not just small parts but major ones such as Mozart’s Pamina and Countess, Verdi’s Desdemona and Amelia, Jenifer in the world premiere of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage and Mme Lidoine, the courageous new Prioress, in the UK premiere of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Michael Tilson Thomas: The Complete Columbia, Sony and RCA Recordings (Sony)Big box sets continue to arrive. This one’s a whopper: 80 discs celebrating Michael Tilson Thomas’s 80th birthday. Artistic qualities aside, the production values here are superb, Sony’s 200-page hardback book accompanying individual discs replete with original sleeve art and spines that display each CD’s contents. This is a minor detail but a significant one, making it easy to find the performance you’re looking for. As with the recent Paavo Järvi set, it’s nice to see a celebration of a conductor who’s very Read more ...
David Nice
When Vladimir Jurowski planned this typically unorthodox programme, he could not have known that a disaster even greater, long-term, than 9/11 was going to befall the USA two days after the concert. There is no bad time for a tricky commemoration of the World Trade Center attacks, but close to a presidential inauguration would have been right whatever the outcome. As for an 18th century “Mass in Time of War”, clearly Ukraine and Gaza would still be on the agenda.Come the event, and neither of the main works on the programme quite stirred the soul: absolutely no fault of Jurowski’s meticulous Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two splendid pieces of orchestral virtuosity began and finished the second Saturday concert by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds at the Bridgewater Hall. It was given the title of “Mischief and Magic”, an apt summary.For mischief we had Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, perhaps the most perfect of his orchestral tone poems in that it not only tells a story but is beautifully shaped and balanced as an extended classical rondo.The episodes were given their folklore-based descriptions by Strauss (“Through the market he rides”, “Dressed as a priest he oozes unction”, “ Read more ...
David Nice
Light and grace must flood the concert hall in Haydn’s The Creation, after a striking-for-its time evocation of Chaos, and periwigged creatures skip around the Genesis picture. With Edward Gardner keeping the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus on their dancing toes, as ever, and three fine soloists carrying the creatures’ share of the beauties, it was a good time for happy creativity.Happily, too, Haydn inclines more in this often intimate oratorio to the instrumental originality of his symphonies than to the strangely vacuous world of his operas. You still sometimes feel that the arias Read more ...
Robert Beale
Placing the UK premiere of Katherine Balch’s whisper concerto (for cello and orchestra) after Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 was probably an inspired idea from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Joshua Weilerstein.In its day, the so-called “Military” Symphony was not only striking on account of its use of novel instrumental effects – the “Turkish music” sound of triangle, cymbals and big drum for one, and clarinets (heard, military-band style, alongside oboes and flute) for another – but the clever and comical way they were brought into a context that was otherwise seemingly orthodox and almost Read more ...
graham.rickson
Leif Ove Andsnes: The Warner Classics Edition 1990-2010 (Warner Classics)It’s good to review a compendious box set celebrating a musician who’s very much still around. The 36 discs in this set certainly aren’t what you’d call historical recordings, though the 20-year period during which they were first released feels an age away. Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes signed his first contract with Virgin Classics (remember them?) aged just 20, and, in his words, “the possibilities seemed endless… people craved CDs and the record companies needed to make recordings of all the repertory, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Let his words resound on high,” sings the choir in the final chorus of The Creation. In King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, it is hard not to want to look up, to admire the splendour of the largest fan vaulting anywhere in Europe. King’s truly is hard to beat as a setting in which to hear Haydn’s oratorio.And whatever else is going on in the world, there would seem to be a good fit here: the 500-year-old building speaks of dignity, importance, grandeur. And Haydn’s work, on one level at least, lives and breathes the unquestioning affirmation of faith in a God who is “exalted” and “almighty”. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Otto Klemperer: The Warner Classics Remastered Edition (Warner Classics)The young Otto Klemperer’s conducting career was encouraged by no less than Gustav Mahler, Klemperer’s meteoric rise leading him to become director of Berlin’s Kroll Opera from 1927 to 1931. The first two CDs in this set comprise recordings made during his tenure there; dim mono sound aside, these fiery readings of Wagner, Brahms and Strauss defy their age. The following decades saw the conductor faced with exile in Los Angeles and range of physical and personal catastrophes, including brief imprisonment. Do listen Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet mischievously described interpreting Haydn’s piano sonatas as “putting clothes on a rather naked skeleton… You have this joy of bringing it to life with all the tools you can imagine.”Certainly the French pianist is well positioned to talk about exhuming not just Haydn’s music but key aspects of his reputation following his release last year of an acclaimed recording of all 62 of his too often neglected piano sonatas.For his lunchtime recital at the Wigmore, Bavouzet opened with a version of Haydn’s 1773 Sonata No. 24 in D Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
More than half a century has passed since John Eliot Gardiner’s choir and orchestras first won their historically-informed licence to thrill. A feverish Saturday night at St Martin-in-the-Fields proved that Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists can still quicken the pulse and rinse the ears of the most jaded concert-goer. In James Gibbs’s elegant temple, a programme of top-drawer Haydn and Mozart symphonies interspersed with a brace of Mozart violin concertos might sound like a recipe for low-key polish and politesse. In the event, Gardiner – who turned 79 last week – and his band Read more ...