Classical music
Matthew Barley
For many thousands of years, humans have turned to art to tell stories about themselves and others because it feels good. It feels good because we sense that it helps us to understand ourselves, and the sharing of these uniquely human stories brings us closer together, and then this bonding, amongst many benefits, increases the safety of our community – humans were quick to realise that we are stronger together.The very act of finding the right notes, colours, words to express something from deep inside that cannot seem to come out in any other way, has a magical effect – if you think about Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The English Concert, directed by Harry Bicket, concluded their festive Baroque banquet with Bach’s Magnificat – complete with its four Christmas-tide interpolations. They had prefaced the Bach with a trio of lesser-known seasonal pieces dating from the preceding decades, by Charpentier, Stradella, and Purcell. That might sound like a light plate of rather scholarly, even austere, hors d’oeuvres. Not all all: Bicket’s enterprising first half proved that late Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ravel: The Complete Works with Piano François-Xavier Poizat, Philharmonia/Simone Menezes et al(Aparté)Ravel was by no means a prolific composer but, including absolutely everything in his catalogue that includes piano, François-Xavier Poizat’s collection stretches to six CDs. Even as someone pretty familiar with Ravel there was lots here I was finding for the first time, alongside much-loved favourites like Le Tombeau de Couperin and Valses Nobles et Sentimentales.Lots of Ravel’s orchestral pieces (including the two just mentioned) started out as piano pieces which he later orchestrated Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The Wild Arts Ensemble was founded by Orlando Jopling in 2022 to create a dynamic, pared-back style of performance in which, as he put it, the “costumes, set and props… can be packed up into a couple of suitcases that we can take with us on the train”.Part of the aim, as with an increasing number of ensembles these days, is to tour in a way that’s more environmentally sustainable, but it’s also resulted in fresh and vivid re-readings of classics that are igniting enthusiasm around the country.This production of the Messiah is currently the jewel in their crown, a supple, energetic Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When does a concert become a ceremony? You generally visit the Barbican for art rather than ritual. Yet, during the Academy of Ancient Music’s performance last night, the bulk of a packed house still stood up for the “Hallelujah” that closes the second part of Handel’s Messiah.This charming, or plain odd, British folk-tradition supposedly derives from George II having done the same in 1743 – although there’s no evidence that the monarch ever rose to the occasion. In any case, it indicates that many of those who rightly love Messiah still treat it as much more than an especially fine Baroque Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Connaught Brass is a quintet of twenty-something players rapidly establishing an enviable reputation, and on the evidence of what I heard yesterday that reputation is fully deserved: they really are superbly good. A well-stuffed Milton Court spoke to their pulling power even in the face of terrible weather, and their easy stage manner and mostly successful repertoire choices made for an enjoyable evening hiding from the elements.Although billed as a Christmas show, there was a minority of seasonal items, even if you stretch a point and include Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé. But there was a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Trio Mediæval: Yule (2L)Pick of my Christmas discs is this sublime collection from Trio Mediæval on the Norwegian audiophile label 2L, reflecting yuletide’s origins in Northern European pagan culture. Imaginative and idiomatic-sounding arrangements, using, variously, kantele, hardanger fiddle, violin, trumpet, organ, bass and percussion invariably suit the material, and the engineering is stunning: sample the organ sound and drum thwacks in ”Lussinati Lange”, or the kantele in “Josefines Julesame” The group have been performing and recording since 1997, and there’s something unearthly Read more ...
David Nice
A time must come again when British orchestras return to complete Tchaikovsky ballet scores in concert, as in the BBC glory days of the great Rozhdestvensky. We were halfway there with The Nutcracker's second act in Mark Wigglesworth’s second programme as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor. The "first act” was in any case a shimmering miracle too, a true partnership with another collegial master, Boris Giltburg, in Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto.Wigglesworth M – not to be confused with Ryan, who may well have improved since I last saw him in action – has by no means Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn Terfel’s still-formidable bass-baritone made the great vault of Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford shrink to a shoebox.With all the vocal charisma of old, and lashings of unashamed theatricality, Terfel (pictured below by Mitch Jenkins) delivered the great despairing lament, “It is enough”, that most obviously acknowledges the debt Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah owes to the Passions of JS Bach. Mendelssohn’s outcast prophet pleads for the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle in the programme seemed likely to come from James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel – his percussion concerto, with the star name of Colin Currie as soloist – and from Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances (especially the third of them) to precede it.Afterwards, it was to be Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony to finish, and that’s been played and heard many times before. In the event, the first two works did sparkle, but the symphony intrigued.The Arnold dances are great fun: Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
There were points when this concert felt like the musical equivalent of watching the atom split – as well as notes there were animal shrieks, sinister rattles, sibilant serpentine sussurations, and primal throaty rumbles. Indian-American composer Shruthi Rajasekar, South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe (pictured below), and the never less than subversive Hermes Experiment unveiled a fascinating laboratory of noise in a lunchtime session that was as exhilarating as it was enjoyably unexpected.The programme opened with Selaocoe, one of the most charismatic and radically experimental Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)Who’d have thought that Igor Levit and Christian Thielemann would be such effective partners? Levitt is one of the most cerebral and thoughtful of pianists with a string of excellent Sony albums, and there’s the worry that any collaborator won’t successfully step up to his level. But this set of Brahms Concertos is excellent, the dialogue between the two musicians transcribed in this set’s booklet suggesting that this was a bromance made in heaven. Concerto No. 1’s Read more ...