tue 08/10/2024

Elgar

Frang, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a concerto performance to treasure

Hauntings, memories, echoes: Antonio Pappano has started his official tenure as chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra by looking back in time. Wednesday’s season opener gave us a MacMillan premiere “haunted by earlier musical spirits and...

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Prom 19, Rummukainen, Dandy, BBCSO, Oramo review - inward reflections and choral transcendence

How do you get five thousand plus people into the Albert Hall to hear two Sanskrit-based rarities by British-born composers? Simple: place the Elgar Cello Concerto in between them. Here was another daring Prom programme that totally worked, not...

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Prom 10, Van der Heijden, BBCSSO, Ryan Wigglesworth review - an engaging and esoteric delight

What is Englishness? Over the last century the answer has changed substantially. Yet last night’s Prom, which – according to the programme – set itself the task of celebrating “all things English” had a very particular answer.This was an England of...

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Hough, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - affection and adventure

It’s probably a bit early to be getting misty-eyed about the approaching end of Sir Mark Elder’s time as music director of the Hallé, but the programme he and they have just finished touring in the North of England will have been, for many, his real...

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Marwood, Power, Watkins, Hallé, Adès, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - sonic adventure and luxuriance

For the second big concert of his “residency” with the Hallé this season, Thomas Adès chose one major piece of his own, rather than a set of shorter ones. Tevot, a 21-minute one-movement work written for the Berlin Philharmonic 18 years ago,...

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Album: Beyoncé - Cowboy Carter

The second act of a trilogy, launched with “Renaissance” (2022), Beyoncé’s latest release has been loudly proclaimed as her “Country” album. In a tradition of surprising and controversial self-reinventions that includes among others Bob Dylan’s...

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Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double bill

Double bills at the ballet don’t often come as neatly gift-wrapped. Each of the works in question was made just before or during lockdown, arriving at its premiere by the skin of its teeth. Each went on to win a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award...

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Kim, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the sound of brass

Ben Gernon’s relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has been a richly rewarding one over the close-on seven years since his appointment as their principal guest conductor began, and indeed subsequently. The impression gained on his first...

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Fung, RPO, Schwarz, Cadogan Hall review - high style from new cellist and conductor on the block

You go to a concert, three-quarters of it popular classics – also great masterpieces – having been told you have to hear a brilliant young cellist, and into the bargain you also discover a remarkable conductor and an orchestra on top form shedding...

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Prom 14: Lisiecki, BBCSO, Chan - fine textures and subtle delights

One of the undoubted highlights of Prom 14 was unprogrammed – following his commanding performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto, Jan Lisiecki returned to the stage to give an encore of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, Opus 9 No 2.There was a rapt...

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theartsdesk at The Three Choirs Festival - Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Hammond

The Three Choirs is (are?) off again, for the 295th time, but with a very different look, even from the festivals of my youth, never mind 1715, or whenever the first one was held (there seems to be some doubt about it). The big oratorio...

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Sinfonia of London, Wilson; Kolesnikov/Tsoy; Bozzini Quartet; Phantasm, Aldeburgh Festival review - new sounds for old

You don’t expect to visit the Britten-Pears shrine in Suffolk and come back raving about Edward Elgar. Yes, Elgar. On Sunday evening, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London brought the composer’s Second Symphony to Snape Maltings: that marshland...

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