sat 20/04/2024

Jiří Bělohlávek

Piemontesi, Karnéus, Reiss, Guildhall Symphony Chorus, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall

Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second Conductor Laureate, Jiří Bělohlávek was always going to deserve a hero’s welcome for taking his players to the finishing line of their six-year cycle through Mahler’s symphonies. As more superficially...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Smetana, Gidon Kremer

 Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1 and 3 Leif Ove Andsnes/Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Sony)The best recent cycle of Beethoven piano concertos is Howard Shelley’s, recorded by Chandos with the Orchestra of Opera North.  This first volume of Leif...

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Andsnes, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall

Pundits have always yoked architecture and Bruckner together, touting void and mass at the expense of the dynamic experience music ought to be. Abbado and his Lucerne Festival Orchestra favoured sinuous instability in the Fifth Symphony earlier this...

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The Bartered Bride, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall

What a relief, for half of last night's semi-staged concert performance, to have left behind Britten's claustrophobic wood at English National Opera and to seek refuge in Smetana's Bohemian village inn of good cheer. Czech music's national comic...

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Vogt, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall

As Mahler symphonies rain down from heaven - or flare up from hell, according to your viewpoint - in this second anniversary year, it's wise to choose carefully. But why earmark Jiří Bělohlávek's performance of the Sixth above the likes of Gergiev,...

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Brewer, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican Hall

Exactly an hour and a half after Wagner's first orchestral brew of sex and religion had raised the curtain on the Royal Opera Tannhäuser, the pilgrims and floozies were at it again over the other side of town. If there was hardly the whiff of...

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Connolly, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bělohlávek, Barbican

As experienced Wagnerian Jiří Bělohlávek came on to launch the BBCSO's new season in mid-air with the Tristan Prelude, I wondered whether the world's finest interpreter of Isolde's serving maid Brangäne, lustrous mezzo Sarah Connolly, was waiting to...

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Lewis, BBCSO, Bělohlávek; Pires, Royal Albert Hall

Two pianists, one indisputably great and the other probably destined to become so, lined up last night to show us why the Proms at its best is a true festival, not just a gaggle of summer concerts. First there was the prince of pearly classicism,...

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