Lutosławski
geoff brown
Champagne on ice in the private boxes; scarcely any spare seats. This isn’t the normal situation for a concert climaxing in Witold Lutosławski’s Third Symphony, a modernist work whose usual audience is more than two men and a dog but still doesn’t pull in the crowds. What pulled in last night’s Proms crowd, of course, was Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra so lustrous that people would pay decent money just to hear them tune up.Indeed, they tuned up beautifully, though still lovelier sounds emerged shortly after as they sank themselves into the work that probably Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: The Eight Great Suites Lisa Smirnova (ECM)This set slipped out quietly at the end of 2011. The typically muted ECM cover gives no hint of how life-enhancing these two discs are; I felt like getting the fluorescent highlighters out and jazzing up the monochrome sleeve art. Pianist Lisa Smirnova, Moscow-born and now living in Vienna, makes a bold case for these underrated, immensely enjoyable suites. Comparing them with Bach’s keyboard output is inevitable. Both are fabulous, of course, but it’s hard to disagree with Uwe Schweikert’s comments in the sleeve notes, that Handel’s Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It’s tempting to say that if Martin Fröst didn’t play the clarinet then he’d be an actor or a dancer. But he is an actor and a dancer and at one point during this scintillating recital he even sang, too – whilst playing the clarinet at the same time, of course. That’s a given. It’s an extension of his lissom body, and in his shiny grey silk suit and untucked shirt he looked decidedly feline. Ever heard a clarinet purr? Ever heard it yowl, scamper, hiss, scratch? Has anyone ever pulled so many colours from the old liquorice stick?His programme with pianist Roland Pöntinen – adhering to Fröst Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
There are many ways of being orchestral. About as many ways, in fact, as there are of organising the body politic. At one extreme there are the fascist orchestral states with their Kim Il-sung-emulating conductor-tyrants (Fritz Reiner's Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for example). At the other you have the right-on, conductorless cooperatives of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The Camerata Salzburg takes up an Enlightenment middle way, fostering gentlemanly camaraderie and a rotating leadership of the wise. Last night, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, it was the turn of the Greek violinist-cum- Read more ...