Beethoven
Gavin Dixon
This programme was a bit of a calling card from the Carducci Quartet. They have previously recorded all three works, and the three composers, Haydn, Shostakovich, Beethoven, clearly play to their strengths. Add to that a modest running time, the Shostakovich Seventh and Beethoven op. 95 are the two composers’ shortest quartets, and the result is a perfect offering for casual Sunday morning recital.Not that the Carduccis ever rest on their laurels. They have a distinctive tone, rich and darkly burnished with real complexity and depth, and they bring a keen interpretive sensibility to every Read more ...
David Nice
One of the many things we’ll miss when Esa-Pekka Salonen moves on from his 13 years as the Philharmonia’s principal conductor will be his programming. For this first of his farewell concerts, he’s not only chosen what he loves but made sure it all fits. No two symphonies could be more different than Beethoven’s First and Sibelius’s Seventh (his last), yet they both hover – Beethoven playfully, Sibelius enigmatically – around the key of C major. The multi-part string hymn near the beginning of the Seventh was more than prefaced by the wind and brass of a Stravinsky masterpiece. And if Liszt’s Read more ...
Boris Giltburg
About a year ago, in a distant pre-pandemic world, I remember walking down Edgware Road one cold London evening. I was heading towards Jaques Samuel Pianos, my favourite haunt in London, to meet filmmaker Stewart French from Fly On The Wall. There, we began setting up mics and lights, (im)patiently waiting for everyone to leave, so that we could start filming the first of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, well into the early hours of the night. That was the launching point of a project I took upon myself – to learn and film all 32 sonatas throughout 2020, Beethoven’s 250 anniversary year.To Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Piano Concerto No. 4, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra/Lahav Shani (piano and conductor) (Warner Classics)Poor Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year saw most of the projected live events cancelled, but good new recordings have continued to appear. One reason for liking this one, performances aside, is the content; pairing a mature piano concerto with a late symphony makes for a satisfying concert in a handy package. Lahav Shani’s Beethoven is powerfully positive, the shadows having more impact because they contrast so strongly with the prevailing mood. Directing Read more ...
David Nice
It seems right that (arguably) the greatest orchestra in the world has (unarguably) the best livestreaming and archive service. Thanks to a vital musicians’ Covid testing set-up, the Berlin Philharmoniker is even more supreme online now that it can field a full team for a work as opulently hard-hitting as Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, without distancing – pairs of string players share stands – even if also, still, without a live audience. The programming has been uncommonly interesting lately, with a "Golden Twenties" series featuring rich and rare repertoire, but even a one-off guest Read more ...
David Nice
Adaptability backed up by funding has been the course of the most successful musical organisations since mid-March – but it’s been especially tough from November onwards. One abrupt lockdown meant that anything scheduled to be performed before a carefully limited live audience within or around that month bit the dust, and the London Symphony Orchestra’s series planned to match Beethoven piano concertos with Stravinsky’s smaller-scale orchestral works at the Barbican with Krystian Zimerman as soloist and Simon Rattle conducting was a major casualty. So was the Beethoven concertos marathon Read more ...
Johannes Vogel
Think of the finale at a big fireworks show: the anticipation; the build up. There is nothing bigger than the Ninth Symphony. It is the climax of this year’s Beethoven celebrations. A year ago, no-one would have expected 2020 to be turned upside down in the way that it has, with so few concerts being held in Europe. Optimism is growing and what better way to bring joy into people’s lives than with a colossal event celebrating one of the greatest composers of all time?As conductor of the 123-strong Sychron Stage Orchestra for the performance, I wanted to be able to lead a concert so magical Read more ...
David Nice
Perhaps it’s just the conventional mind which celebrates the pathos, tragedy and triumph in Beethoven’s music at the expense of his humour. And that’s the one aspect of the composer which has been a constant revelation – to me, at any rate – in his anniversary year. Too often the laughs have been solitary, listening to CDs or watching online. On Saturday night, in the warm and friendly atmosphere of the Fidelio Orchestra Café, the pleasure could be audibly shared in two of the composer’s wittiest and most surprising piano sonatas, and amplified by the revelation of another major Beethoven Read more ...
Robert Beale
Adaptability is the name of the game for big companies in the music business now. And Opera North’s streamed presentation of Beethoven's Fidelio from inside Leeds Town Hall is a prime example of just how adaptable things need to be.The orchestra is down to 33: single (hardworking!) woodwind, two horns, two trumpets, no trombones, in a score reduction by Francis Griffin. The chorus numbers 24, and between them that’s going some for a socially distanced ensemble these days. The soloists are spread along the front of the extended platform, with space to act and interact to some degree. Lighting Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The key of C minor threw a dark shadow over music long before it became the tonality for Beethoven to express the struggle of one against many in the Fifth Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto. Mozart was a feted teenager and Beethoven a babe in arms when Haydn wrote his C minor Piano Sonata in 1771, 60 years before Schumann began to make his own inner turmoil into music in the wake of Beethoven. Yet through silence as much as sound, Paul Lewis made something personal and almost confessional from the Sonata’s slow introduction, placing the full tonal weight of the Wigmore’s Steinway at the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
As our friends across the pond celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, a mix of music from America kicked off the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert, opening with Massachusetts-born composer Carl Ruggles’s Angels for muted brass. Ruggles originally penned the work in 1920 as the second movement of a three-part piece entitled Men and Angels. It was scored for six muted trumpets, but the 1938 revision which was performed on Thursday features four trumpets and muted trombones; it's also transposed down a minor third. Tenderly played by the brass of the BBC SSO, it had a touching, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Berliner Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko: Music by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Franz Schmidt, Rudi Stephan (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)Kirill Petrenko’s supposed indifference to making recordings is overstated: there’s a whole load of stuff to watch on the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall, and own-label CD releases have included John Adams’ The Wound Dresser and Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony. That same, excellent, Tchaikovsky performance is the one included here, made in March 2017, this five-disc box set also including a Tchaikovsky 5 taped two years later. This takes a Read more ...