20th century
alexandra.coghlan
After filing for bankruptcy earlier this year, the Philadelphia Orchestra seemed poised to be the flagship cultural casualty of the financial crisis. Five months on and the bills continue to rise, but in the best Titanic tradition the band are determinedly playing on. It’s been five years since we last heard them at the Proms and their return last night under Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit saw a capacity crowd turn out to show their support and to hear the glossy music-making for which this orchestra is so justly celebrated.For a partnership so synonymous with French repertoire, the Read more ...
graham.rickson
We head east this week - new pieces by a contemporary Russian composer, and a bargain box set showcasing the flamboyant orchestral music of a neglected Russian. And a famous viola player leads a young Moscow orchestra in electrifying accounts of Brahms and Tchaikovsky.Brahms: Symphony No 3, Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 6 Novaya Rossiya State Symphony Orchestra/Yuri Bashmet (ICA Classics)
You don’t expect to find these two composers sharing a disc, in the light of an infamous quote attributed to Tchaikovsky in 1886: “I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard!” Read more ...
graham.rickson
A legendary septuagenarian wind player from Switzerland returns to the repertoire with which he made his name 50 years ago, and there's an exciting live reading of a gloomy fin-de-siècle symphony conducted by a contemporary French giant. The same conductor also treats us to a sparkling Stravinsky rarity, and a youthful duo lighten the mood with some Russian fireworks on Merseyside.Bach: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - Concertos and Sinfonias for Oboe Heinz Holliger (oboe), Camerata Bern/Erich Höbarth (ECM)
None of Bach’s original concertos for oboe survive in their original form; yet it’s now Read more ...
graham.rickson
A young American composer's work is showcased by a major label and doesn't disappoint. A classy British horn player enjoys teaming up with a pianist and a flautist. And an impressive cycle of 20th-century symphonies gets a welcome airing, thanks to a hard-working London orchestra and their principal conductor.Martinů: The Six Symphonies BBC Symphony Orchestra/Bělohlávek (Onyx)
Deep joy. There’s a lot of classical music which is justly neglected. But the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s six symphonies are always worth hearing, and this cycle of performances was recorded live at the Barbican Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although FW Murnau’s pre-America years will always be defined by 1922’s Nosferatu, he’d already racked up nine films in the preceding three years. He made his mark on Hollywood with the 1927 landmark Sunrise but, although being overshadowed by Nosferatu, his earlier German films reveal how he reached these points. Schloss Vogelöd (also known as The Haunted Castle) is a Murnau obscurity, a stately, atmospheric meditation from 1921 that’s capable of giving the willies.But they take a while manifesting themselves. The straightforward plot is drawn out. Every scene is a carefully staged set piece Read more ...
fisun.guner
In his later years, Stanley Spencer cut quite a figure in his native village of Cookham in Berkshire: he would often be seen pushing his rickety pram, with its battered umbrella, paints and canvas, and a hand-painted sign requesting all curious onlookers to desist from disturbing the artist at work. He spent most of his life in the village - even acquiring the nickname “Cookham” at the Slade, since he’d rush back by train after lessons every evening, presumably in time for tea.His beloved “village in heaven” resided in his imagination always, and his religious paintings, for which he is best Read more ...
marcus.odair
“Wynton Marsalis has had an enormous impact on jazz over the last 40 years,” say the programme notes, “being one of the first artists to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz.” Although it seems to bestow an extra precociousness upon the American trumpeter, who was only born in 1961, the first part of that sentence is undoubtedly true. The second part is true too, until the last two words. The one thing Wynton Marsalis does not do is modern jazz.That was clear in his set tonight, blues-indebted and swinging – or, occasionally, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
One thing became clearer to me last night – just how much Steve Reich has borrowed from world music in his compositions – we had the flamenco-tinged Clapping, Electric Counterpoint, using Central African guitar lines, and Music for 18 Musicians, a mix of West African rhythms, Indonesian gamelan and other elements. It was also clear how much a sold-out late-night Prom audience had taken this music to their hearts, nearly 40 years after some of it was written. It still sounds fresh and, rather than being mindlessly repetitive, most of it shimmers away. Like an endless. Like an endless Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is there a place for the travelling fun fair any more? Static attractions like Alton Towers and Thorpe Park have rides that are bigger, grander, more varied and scarier than anything a traditional, transient fair could ever transport. All the Fun of the Fair’s answer was that the fair has survived by winding the clock back, rekindling the past with original Victorian and Edwardian rides. There’s still room for something less bombastic.All the Fun of the Fair traced the history of the travelling fair in its familiar form. What we now recognise as the fair, with rides, sideshows and snacks Read more ...
fisun.guner
The only voice recording Sigmund Freud ever made was for the BBC. It was made in December 1938, at Freud’s West Hampstead home just a few months before the father of psychoanalysis succumbed to throat cancer. He was 82 and wouldn’t see out another year, yet here he was on fighting form: “People did not believe in my facts and thought my theories unsavoury,” he declaims, his voice clipped, precise and resoundingly emphatic. “Resistance was strong and unrelenting. The struggle is not yet over."Freud was a revolutionary, and like all revolutionaries he was, clearly, a dogmatist. Twenty years Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Jealousy of people who live in Birmingham is not (I venture to hazard) so widespread a phenomenon as to merit a name all its own. After last night’s Prom from the CBSO and music director Andris Nelsons however, a term may well have to be coined for all of us Londoners whose green-eared envy seems unlikely to abate any time soon. We’ve heard the recordings and the rumours of greatness trickling down from the West Midlands, but the opportunity to see this partnership in action further south is rare. Conquering the Royal Albert Hall with an evening of generous, emotive music-making, the CBSO Read more ...
David Nice
All aboard the chrome locomotive for composer-conductor Oliver Knussen’s annual magical mystery tour. You may notice rather few fellow passengers in the Albert Hall; that’s a given with this event (though the Proms could have thrown in and advertised one of Olly’s Top 10 OTT Favourites – I’ve heard him proclaim them - to drum up more trade). You may also find rather too many stops for change of crew. But so long as you sit forward to catch the results of his famously acute hearing, second only to Boulez’s, you’ll get something out of a long, unsexy ride.Part of the pleasure of multi-work Read more ...