Germany
David Nice
Nothing tests small-hall acoustics better than that most exuberant of holies, the Sanctus from Bach’s B minor Mass. After one of the year’s big disappointments, the blowsy sound coming from chamber ensembles in the Barbican/Guildhall School’s new Milton Court – a surprise miscalculation from Arup acousticians - it seemed imperative to get back to Kings Place’s Hall One, which feels bigger but is some 200 seats smaller (420 to Milton Court’s 608). And oh, the clarion cries of the 32 young Cambridge choral singers! The piercing but never ear-splitting beauty of perhaps the greatest Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: German Measles Vol 1 – Flames of Love / German Measles Vol 2 – Sun Came Out at SevenFor the years between The Beatles inventing themselves in the clubs of Hamburg and the evolution of what was dubbed Krautrock, Germany’s popular music scene hasn’t gained much of an international profile subsequently. It’s understandable, but a pity. Just as the Fabs inspired countless wannabe beatsters in Liverpool and beyond in Britain, they did the same in the country which had as great a hand in their training as the UK. The two German Measles albums don’t dwell on local stars like Read more ...
David Nice
Is anyone else sick of creepy brotherhoods skewering the transcendent in Mozart’s and Wagner’s late operas? Both Sarastro’s cult and the company of the grail are in sore need of change - "fresh blood" would be an unfortunate term under the circumstances - when we first encounter them. But both Simon McBurney’s production of The Magic Flute at English National Opera and now Stephen Langridge’s unleavened Royal Opera Parsifal suggest that these are sects not worth joining or saving. If I were Wagner’s hero in this unholy hall, I’d get the hell out of there and call the police.Langridge, who Read more ...
Daniel Hope
In 1998, as I was driving home and flipping through the radio channels, a piece of music caught my ear. A string trio. With elements of Bartók , Stravinsky and maybe Janáček? And yet I was pretty sure none of these composers had written for this combination. I pulled over and sat transfixed by the side of the road until the announcer said: “that was a string trio by Gideon Klein”. Who?I googled Gideon Klein and learned a lot about a place called Theresienstadt (also known by its Czech name as Terezín), a garrison town 60 km north of Prague, the central collection point or ghetto Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Stuttgart Ballet, one of Europe's most highly respected companies, is clearly determined to show London its best sides – all of them. Thirteen pieces in one performance is less a mixed bill than a tasting menu, and one that aims to impress: this smorgasbord of pieces were all choreographed for the company, and more than half have not been performed in the UK before.The menu proper is preceded by an amuse-bouche which sets the tone for the evening: John Cranko's short Hommage à Bolshoi (1964) is a velouté of classical loveliness (perfectly rendered by the stunning lines of Maria Eichwald) with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although most readily pigeonholed as a minimalist pianist whose compositions are as much about the space between the notes as what he actually plays, Germany's Nils Frahm has also worked with the Juno synthesiser and released pieces which edge towards techno. Until now, he hasn't made it easy to get a handle on his full scope. Spaces is the first release to capture this. A live album which doesn’t sound live, it includes compositions which never been released before. Despite occasional bursts of applause, it feels like a studio album.At his last London performance, at St John at Hackney in Read more ...
edward.seckerson
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second residency at the Barbican Centre Riccardo Chailly pulled focus on an entirely new sounding Brahms. Gone were all those bad performance practices, bad habits, from the early 20th century, gone was the lingering romanticism, the willful soupiness, and in with a vengeance came a classical rigour, a lean and hungry vitality. Like so much of what we have come to expect of Chailly the first of this four concert series with its attendant side events brought a total re-evaluation of the composer: no longer the conservative romantic, the polar opposite of Read more ...
graham.rickson
I’d not previously identified much comedic potential in Mahler’s gargantuan Sixth Symphony, a piece which would feature prominently in many people’s lists of most depressing works. Which presumably explains why this astonishing concert wasn’t a sell-out, and why the prevailing gloom prompted a fair few audience members to make an intrusive dash for the exit before the double basses sounded their final pizzicato.Still, despite the darkness, there were giggles to be had. Mahler’s hammer blows of fate are difficult to realise. Here, a poker-faced percussionist precariously wielded a giant mallet Read more ...
David Nice
So we glide between seasons from one communicative diva giving her all in a vast space to another casting spells in intimate surroundings. While Joyce DiDonato, not perhaps one of the world’s great voices but certainly a great performer, was captivating the Proms multitudes on Saturday night, the Wigmore Hall’s concert year sidled in with Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside, no low-key singers. But then nor is Anne Schwanewilms, the finest of Strauss sopranos onstage and the most nuanced of Lieder singers, here on a flying visit – and airborne it was - for a BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert.Lieder Read more ...
David Nice
So for one last time this season the impossible colosseum of Albertopolis became the Wagnerian holiest of holies – to be precise, the Cathedral of the Holy Grail - and once again I fell in love with the beast transfigured. Justin Way, the one artist common to all seven Wagner operas as their subtle semi-stager, should be the delegate to receive the award the Proms deserve for highest achievement of bicentenary year; and it seemed right to have Sir John Tomlinson, albeit by dint of another bass’s indisposition, giving his benediction as the witness of a final miracle.No mere ghost of Wagnerian Read more ...
David Nice
Mahler, who like most of us thought Bach was “the greatest of them all” and studied in depth the edition of his complete works, would have been delighted by last night’s extravaganza – a true celebration of what makes the Proms the much quoted “biggest music festival in the world”. Only two Bach oratorios – cantatas in all but name – could possibly follow, after a sizeable break for supper, the Mahler symphony, his Second, which ends in such a blazing resurrection. It’s disappointing, then, to record that while there was so much to enjoy in both concerts, the expected transportation on angel Read more ...
David Nice
On the one occasion I went to Bayreuth, I made the mistake of seeing The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin after the best of Ring cycles. At the Proms we’ve had a week of serious Wagnerian withdrawal symptoms, so Tannhäuser was never going to feel like too much or too little of a good thing. In any case, this always fascinating if dramatically primitive early clash of sex and religion is shot through with later passages composed in between work on the Ring, most of them included in last night's 1875 hybrid version. And Donald Runnicles is not a conductor to stand in the shadow of Daniel Barenboim Read more ...