Finland
Prom 40: BBCSSO, DausgaardSunday, 16 August 2015
From Sakari Oramo’s riveting Nielsen symphonies at the Barbican to Thomas Dausgaard kicking off the Proms’ Sibelius cycle, the two Nordic immortals are well served in their 150th birthday year. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, whose reins... Read more... |
Prom 13: Josefowicz, BBCSO, MälkkiTuesday, 28 July 2015
A packed Albert Hall told an instructive story: programme Holst’s The Planets at the Proms and you can dare to do anything in the first half. Besides, though it will be a red letter day when we don’t have to put “women” in front of “conductors”, the... Read more... |
Juntunen, Philharmonia, Ashkenazy, RFHFriday, 12 June 2015
Vladimir Ashkenazy should be made an honorary Finn: not just for his constant championship of Sibelius’s orchestral works throughout his conducting life so far, but above all for the way he understands them. On the evidence of last night’s 150th... Read more... |
Kozhukhin, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSunday, 24 May 2015
No two symphonic swansongs could be more different than Sibelius’s heart-of-darkness Tapiola and Nielsen’s enigmatically joky Sixth Symphony. In its evasive yet organic jumpiness, the Danish composer’s anything but “Simple Symphony” – the Sixth’s... Read more... |
Swanhunter, Opera North, Linbury Studio TheatreSunday, 05 April 2015
There was a moment half-way through Jonathan Dove’s children’s opera Swanhunter when I suddenly realised why pantomime developed its convention of the principal boy. Having a grown man prancing and posturing boyishly for the entertainment of a room... Read more... |
Building a Library: Living with SibeliusThursday, 19 March 2015
I’ve just spent five weeks in the company of a very austere and sometimes frightening masterpiece, Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, hearing a great many recordings of it for Building a Library, the abiding gem of Radio 3’s CD Review in which the critic... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Sakari OramoTuesday, 17 February 2015
Rattle and the Berliners went home at the beginning of the week with vine-leaves in their hair. There's now something else to celebrate. Exactly one week on from the second concert in their Sibelius cycle, the Barbican hosted even more of an all-out... Read more... |
Sibelius Cycle 2, Kavakos, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, BarbicanThursday, 12 February 2015
Bass lines were Edward Seckerson’s starting point yesterday in welcoming the Berlin Philharmonic Sibelius cycle to London, and none strikes more terror from the depths than the subterranean growl that launches the most selectively-scored symphony of... Read more... |
Sibelius Cycle 1, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, BarbicanWednesday, 11 February 2015
Sir Simon Rattle’s Sibelian journey has been long and fruitful and has taken him all the way from Birmingham to Berlin, and more particularly the revered Philharmonic where the spaces between the notes now resonate in extraordinary ways and the bass... Read more... |
Album of the Year: Pepe Willberg – Pepe & SaimaaSaturday, 27 December 2014
Finland’s album of the year, the number one, gold-selling and best-of-2014 poll-topper Pepe & Saimaa, has barely registered elsewhere. Probably not a crime but a damn shame nonetheless as the album, released in May, is undoubtedly an all-time... Read more... |
Leonskaja, SCO, Kamu, Usher Hall, EdinburghFriday, 14 November 2014
Most pianists never truly master one of Brahms’s two piano concertos, those colossal symphonies for soloist and orchestra, let alone both. To present the two in one concert, then, seems foolhardy – and apparently was when András Schiff went for the... Read more... |
quartet-lab, Wigmore HallWednesday, 22 October 2014
Musical theatre needn’t be dominated by the human voice. Instrumental dramas with an element of acting can be a good way into the wonderful world of chamber music for younger audiences, and the Wigmore Hall’s new gambit of special student tickets... Read more... |
