Mozart
graham.rickson
Mozart: Piano Concertos no 6, 8 and 9 Angela Hewitt (piano), Orchestra da Camera di Mantova (Hyperion)This first volume in Angela Hewitt’s projected Mozart concerto series deserves praise for featuring three early pieces, instead of starting with the better-known mature works. Which isn’t a slight on these three concertos, each of which sounds like fully-formed Mozart, particularly the Concerto no 9, written when the composer was 20. Rather than a work made up of solos interspersed with tutti passages, piano and orchestra feel inseparable here, the piano making a cheeky entrance within Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A music broadcaster commented after last night’s concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra that all the hype, all the talk about the surf-obsessed, free-spirited leader Richard Tognetti, had left her half expecting them to surf onto the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. As they walked on however (decorously, and rather more smartly dressed than most English groups) we were reminded that there’s nothing gimmicky about this ensemble. They might stage surf-music retreats, play concerts in the Australian desert, but when it comes down to performance they are as ferociously serious as any of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having blazed a trail through choral music, Simon Russell Beale now focuses his attentions on the symphony in this new four-part series. At last able to put aside the mind-games and chicanery of his role as Home Secretary William Towers in Spooks (RIP), Beale emerged as an engaging and enthusiastic host in this opening episode. He wore his erudition with an ironic twinkle as he toured the garrets and palaces of Europe on the trail of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He seemed especially to relish being able to bob about in a yacht off Dover, in emulation of Haydn's queasy cross-Channel voyage to Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Time is a rare privilege in a choreographer’s career - in Britain, anyway. We don’t have the equivalents of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham or Paul Taylor, who build careers into their eighties and beyond, with mighty efforts from private patrons and friendly art giants of their generation (Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Isamu Noguchi et al). UK choreographers are fortunate to get 10 years until the Arts Council deems it time to push them out of the subsidised nest, to vanish in their late thirties, most of them.Hence the interesting anomaly of Richard Alston, who stands out as the senior Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Fiona Shaw's new production of The Marriage of Figaro for the ENO focuses on the theme of entrapment. Her first victim? A noisy bee. Don Basilio finds himself so harassed by its buzzing, he confines it to the body of a harpsichord. Magically, a few seconds later, the low hum reappears - on strings and bassoons.It's classic Shaw: a clever, symbolic, funny and possibly superfluous bit of theatrical punnery. She doesn't overdo the anomie. The political and class dimensions are but lightly touched upon. But there is certainly a nasty tension to the Almaviva household. Were they as upset about the Read more ...
ash.smyth
A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works. Throughout his career he has worked regularly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where in 2008 he created the title role in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.At his home in Sussex, Sir John talks to theartsdesk - in booming Lancashire tones - about getting into Wagner, the importance of a good beard, Read more ...
stephen.walsh
After a summer of operas set in what might tactfully be called fancy locations, it comes as a mild shock to return to Wales and a Don Giovanni that actually takes the composer’s instructions as its starting-point. John Caird, whose first ever production for WNO a few years back was Don Carlos, revisits Spain without a qualm. He gives us heavily embossed ironwork and carved oak, he gives us cowled monks and cloaked aristocrats. And he captures without irony a world in which God and the Devil can be defied but not denied – a world forever teetering on the brink of moral and spiritual Read more ...
ash.smyth
Next week Sir John Tomlinson (b 1946), renowned mega-bass and routine frequenter of the Covent Garden stage, appears in concert at the Windsor Festival. It is a picturesque halt on a career that sees him circling the world's greatest opera houses in the most epic roles in opera. As is typical of this far from typical singer, the concert is huge in its range, encompassing Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, its lyrical portrayals ranging from servants to gods, from priests to cobblers, human conditions of every shade from ruthless to kind.In the first of two interview features this weekend – and fresh Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
David Fray certainly has the locks to be a piano virtuoso (eat your heart out, Franzi). And he has the looks, the troubled brow, the pallor and a suitably eccentric manner (the Glenn Gould hunch and hum came out for all the runs). But does he have the hands?He definitely has hands. And on last night's viewing they were the right hands for Mozart. The understated Piano Concerto in C major K503 has never been the most popular of Mozart's concertos. Eschewing virtuosity and outward emotion for sunny but sensitive inward mooching, the work requires an especially careful and Read more ...
ash.smyth
When you go to a trendy London performance "space" to watch an opera about rape and murder you should probably expect a few shocks. Or, if this ain’t your first Don Giovanni, you should expect not to be surprised by whatever provocations the director may have in store – which is much the same. What you probably don’t expect is for the overture to be played electronically and/or sound like it’s been remixed by Thom Yorke. But in Robin Norton-Hale’s "new version", that’s what you get – and plenty more besides. And you know what? It really works. It does. Mostly. Read more ...
David Nice
Robin the boy wonder, as he was somewhat patronisingly dubbed during his prodigious rise to conducting stardom, will make a bracing Batman for Glyndebourne Festival Opera when he takes over from current music director Vladimir Jurowski in January 2014.There's no doubt, I think, in anyone's mind down there in Sussex or indeed in the music world at large that he's the right man for the job. He learnt his craft with Glyndebourne on Tour (GOT) starting as assistant conductor on Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 2004 and going on to be its music director from 2007-9 - an era culminating in a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The history of maths and music is the history of early Greek philosophy, medieval astronomy, of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the two World Wars. While mathematics at its purest may be an abstraction, the quest for its proofs is deeply and definingly human, charged with biological, theological and even political motive. Whether through performance or discussions about music, this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival (which begins this week) explores the mathematical processes that have both shaped and echoed the history of Western Europe and its art, tracing musical development from the Read more ...