Classical music
Jasper Rees
The vuvuzela's long and literally monotonous journey from Soweto to the very epicentre of high European culture is complete. During the World Cup they blew it with incessant vigour on the terraces of South Africa's stadiums. Now they're blowing it in the Berlin Phil.The orchestra has probably the most distinguished horn section in the world including, in Sarah Willis and Fergus McWilliam, two British players. You can follow the section on Facebook here. And you can watch them playing the vuvuzela right here.
mark.padmore
Few great works of art are as disarming as Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. With its folksong-like melodies and deceptively simple harmonic palate, it is quite hard to account for the cycle’s profound emotional effect. How is it that over the course of 20 songs we fall under the spell of a naïve and sentimental lover, a slightly effeminate, self-obsessed boy who, no sooner than he sees a rival, despairs and drowns himself?Part of the answer becomes apparent when we look at the poetic source for the cycle. The poems that Schubert found in Wilhelm Müller’s anthology, The Posthumous Papers of a Read more ...
David Nice
Two pianists, one indisputably great and the other probably destined to become so, lined up last night to show us why the Proms at its best is a true festival, not just a gaggle of summer concerts. First there was the prince of pearly classicism, Paul Lewis, consolidating the democratic Beethoven he’s already established on CD withJiří Bělohlávek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Then along came the queen of romantic night, Maria João Pires, to unfold a late-night brace of Chopin nocturnes. The whole, well-tempered experience left those of us lucky to be there walking on air.Let me confess that Read more ...
David Nice
Perhaps we can drop the "sir" here, as he preferred, though most of the contributors below only knew him in his knighted later years. No death of a musical great, at least since the departure of Mstislav Rostropovich, has caused such a flurry of tributes and reminiscences, even if many of us were long prepared for the end and marvelled at the way he soldiered on to give more great performances in his final year. Tributes from Kit Armstrong, Isobel Buchanan, Colin Currie, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Edward Gardner, Linda Esther Gray, Roy McEwan, David Nice, Peter Rose and Edward Seckerson.If you Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
York is a bit like Oxford, I’ve always thought: that perplexing contrast between the central squares and marketplaces, in all their twee glory – all aimless, besatchelled French students and anoraked tourists queuing for tea at Betty’s – and the simply glorious architecture and hidden back streets, from the ever-breathtaking splendour of the Minster to the endless succession of tiny hidden churches that inhabit every other corner. You could, potentially, hate it, but you always come away feeling pleasantly surprised, and surprisingly inspired.
And it’s a good place to hold an early Read more ...
theartsdesk
Robert Sandall, the music writer and broadcaster, and one of the first members of The Arts Desk, died this morning from prostate cancer. He was 58. His wit, easy style and energetic intelligence were seen in a number of book and concert reviews he did for this site, despite the encroachment of cancer. His range of interest and enthusiasms were shown in the subjects he covered, from his acute interview with Katherine Jenkins to his study of the Steve Jobs effect on the music industry. He was a presenter of Radio 3's eclectic Mixing It and Late Junction, a former Sunday Times rock critic and a Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
What a thrilling sound the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra can make when it chooses! What a grippingly deep tone, from a lower strings section that sounds like you’ve got the bass on your car stereo turned up daringly high, what clinical precision (in the best sense of the word) in the wind section, what power in the brass. At times you could almost see the surges of energy shooting off into the auditorium. You could certainly hear it.
This was a Romantic behemoth of a concert: dripping with over-the-topness and oozing slush, the sort that is guaranteed to sell out the Albert Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach by cable car. When you get up there you are greeted by an alpine symphony of glaciers slithering off peaks and pastures clanging with cowbells. Streams descant and trill along gutters between chalets. No wonder stellar musicians drop their fee to return, both to play and listen. Egos are left at the bottom of the mountain.But location is only part Read more ...
David Nice
Numerologists may have been fretting over whether Proms forces could match the apocryphal thousand of the mightiest Eighth Symphony's 1910 world premiere, which Mahler feared would turn into a "catastrophic Barnum and Bailey show". With nothing like 350 in the children's chorus, for a start, not a chance. Anyway, the resplendent sound produced by the choristers who filled the seats either side and in front of the Albert Hall organ, as well as by the players of Jiři Bĕlohlávek's BBC Symphony Orchestra on the platform and up in the gallery, made the question of numbers - circa 600, for the Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's that time again. The BBC Proms - in classical music terms, the greatest show on Earth - begin tonight with Mahler's massive Eighth Symphony. From Bryn Terfel in Wagner on the second night of the Proms to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Monteverdi's Vespers on the second-to-last night. theartsdesk's music writers choose the performances they're looking forward to. IGOR TORONYI-LALICThe credit crunch has no doubt played havoc on this year's season. Only one visit from an American orchestra and three big-gun orchestral visits from Europe will find their way to the Royal Albert Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
There are some recitals where you think only about the abstracted music - the harmonic arguments, the structural cleverness, the textural ingenuity - and there are others where you are forced to confront the presence of a set of living, breathing, leering musical beasts. Last night's stunning Wigmore Hall debut by Sarajevan-born pianist Ivana Gavrić - to a sellout crowd - was a very compelling example of the latter: a performance where the musical storytelling was being so well communicated that it was almost as if she was speaking to the audience or rolling a projector. Read more ...
David Nice
So most of us blinked and missed Martha Argerich gliding into Kings Place's Argentine celebrations last week. Yet here I am writing again about this liveliest of venues' Chopin marathon, and like a would-be Prommer who joins the last night party without having been to the Albert Hall more than once in the season I'm culpable of marking the grand finale after experiencing only a slice of modest Cypriot pianist Martino Tirimo's 10 concerts devoted to our bicentenary boy. Never mind: both the encyclopedic recitals I did hear seemed to take us through a turbulent lifetime. That would be true just Read more ...