sat 12/10/2024

harpsichord

Esfahani, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - music meets machine

This was one of those rare occasions when a somewhat diverse collection of pieces knits together into a rather satisfying programme. To start at the end, the Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony is a rumbustious crowd pleaser not least because of its...

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Mahan Esfahani / Richard Goode, Wigmore Hall review - clarity and contrast from two keyboard masters

Two successive nights, two contrasted solo keyboard recitals at the Wigmore Hall: not great for the knees but marvellous for the soul. On Saturday the Tehran-born, US-raised harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani continued a mammoth project: he has been...

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theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2018 - canaries in front of a Périgord altar

Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans...

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Rambert: Sub/ The Art of Touch/ Nijinsky's Faune/ What Wild Ecstasy, Sadler's Wells

The past is a hard card to play for a contemporary dance company, even harder than for a ballet company. A work that’s proved over time, whose quality emerges and re-emerges with revisiting, casts an imposing shadow over new works created in the...

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theartsdesk Debate: The Art of Performance

To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Actor Toby Jones, singer-songwriter Mara Carlyle, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and...

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The Arts Desk Birthday Event - Join Us on 9/9!

On 9 September theartsdesk, Britain's first professional arts journalism site, will be two years old. To celebrate we’re holding a live debate with four leading performers during the Kings Place Festival. An actor, a singer, a dancer and an...

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James Bowman, Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore Hall

The end of an era: James Bowman bids a gentle farewell to the London concert stage

The Wigmore Hall was full to capacity last night, its crowd gathered to pay homage to a great musician at the end of his career, and to discover the talents of a great musician at the very beginning of his. While Alfred Deller might have been the...

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Goldberg Variations, Fretwork, St George's Bristol

Fretwork: A smooth tapestry without joins

There are few more beautiful sounds on this planet than a consort of viols well played. Like a quiet conversation overheard from across the room, it combines intimacy and secrecy, together with a kind of conspiratorial subtlety of feeling –...

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The Seckerson Tapes: Christophe Rousset Interview

The apartment is shared with a Burmese cat named Hermione and two no less exquisite and venerable harpsichords. In the "library", lavishly bound scores attest to Rousset's archival spirit with his latest pride and joy laid out on the table - the...

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The Art of Touch/ Rainforest/ A Linha Curva, Rambert, Sadler's Wells

Pieter Symonds and Jonathan Goddard in 'Rainforest': 'stirring themselves amid the LSD landscape of silver floating pillows'

There are occasionally pieces of dance that you just want not to have to scribble notes about, just to watch and enjoy through your senses, not perming it all through the verbal brain. Siobhan Davies’s The Art of Touch is one of those, and when her...

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