Bach
Nicola Benedetti, Barbican Hall review – from Bach to the Highlands via New OrleansFriday, 24 September 2021If a standard-sized recital hall can be a lonely place for a solo violinist, playing an auditorium of Barbican dimensions must feel like crossing a desert under pitiless spotlight sun. Happily, Nicola Benedetti’s prowess as a communicator means that... Read more... |
First Person: pianist Filippo Gorini on head, heart and the contemporary in Bach's 'The Art of Fugue'Saturday, 11 September 2021![]() A past work of art either still speaks to us in the present, or it is dead. To try and understand a masterpiece, we tend to look at its past: we study it, analyse it, read biographies of the artist behind it and chronicles of its historical... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Star sopranos, forest spirits and a Mexican funeral marchSaturday, 11 September 2021![]() Die stille Stadt: Songs by Alma Mahler, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold Dorothea Herbert (soprano), Peter Nilsson (piano) (7 Mountain Records)German dramatic soprano Dorothea Herbert will be playing Leonore in a new... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Arcangelo, Cohen, BBC Proms review – journey to the end of nightFriday, 10 September 2021No disrespect to Sakari Oramo and his colleagues in tomorrow’s farewell jamboree, but I wonder whether this performance should have featured as the Last Night of the Proms. After all its terror, grief and sorrow, the St Matthew Passion ends with... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Viols, violas and symphonies from a Latvian polymathSaturday, 28 August 2021![]() Imants Kalniņš: Complete Symphonies and Concertos Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala and Māris Sirmais (Skani)If the eye-catching box design doesn’t attract your attention, the first track on CD 1 will, an extract from the veteran... Read more... |
Ólafsson, Philharmonia, Järvi, BBC Proms review - a ravishing Proms debutMonday, 16 August 2021![]() What does it mean to be Classical? It’s the question award-winning Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has consistently asked in a career that has collided music from Bach to Debussy, presenting them as part of a single conversation and continuum.... Read more... |
Classical CDs: wolves, woodwinds and a masonic funeralSaturday, 17 July 2021![]() Martha Argerich Edition (EuroArts)Almost eight hours of Martha Argerich on film. What a glorious prospect! This six-DVD set mostly consists of recordings of live concerts. The set was released to celebrate the great Argentinian’s 80th birthday... Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Butt, Wigmore Hall review – bijou BachMonday, 05 July 2021![]() The Edinburgh-based Dunedin Consort are regular visitors to the Wigmore Hall, and their concert on Saturday night was greeting by a full house. In these Covid times, that meant an audience of just 200, but from the applause, they were clearly... Read more... |
Bach & Sons, Bridge Theatre review - humorous and deeply intelligentWednesday, 30 June 2021![]() In John Eliot Gardiner’s magnificent wide-ranging biography of Bach, Music In The Castle of Heaven, he tells the story of the composer’s early run-in with a bassoonist with his typical zest for detail. “[H]e called him a Zippel Fagottist. Even... Read more... |
Uchida, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review - Bach to the futureFriday, 11 June 2021![]() In the beginning, 38 years ago, came a career-making Mahler Third Symphony for Esa-Pekka Salonen in his first concert with the Philharmonia. Reassembling that vast epic wouldn't be possible under present circumstances. Last night, ending 13 years as... Read more... |
Ragged Music Festival 2021, Ragged School Museum review - harrowing of hell from great musiciansWednesday, 26 May 2021![]() Seven months might just about be enough time to have digested the deep and intense offerings of the Second Ragged Music Festival before moving on to more soul-shattering and transcendence in the third. That there hasn’t been a year between the two... Read more... |
Bach St John Passions from Oxford and Stockholm online review – theatrical drive from Gardiner, interiority under HardingSaturday, 03 April 2021![]() Last Easter, viewing options were limited: no-one who saw it will forget a version of Bach’s St John Passion from the church where it was first performed in 1724, Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, with an idiosyncratic tenor taking all the parts other than... Read more... |
