Mozart
Mark Padmore, Mitsuko Uchida/ Benjamin Baker, Timothy Ridout, Wigmore Hall online/BBC Radio 3 review – hail and farewellSunday, 28 June 2020
Of course, we just had to end with a midsummer Winterreise. The Wigmore Hall’s month of lockdown concerts for BBC Radio 3 had begun with a legendary elegy – the Chaconne from Bach’s D minor Partita, written according to musical folklore in memory of... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Franck, Holger Falk, Ursula Paludan MonbergSaturday, 20 June 2020
Franck: Psyché, Le Chasseur maudit, Les Éolides RCS Voices, Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jean-Luc Tingaud (Naxos)Franck by Franck: Symphony in D Minor, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Mikko Franck... Read more... |
Don Giovanni/Sibelius plus, Swedish RSO, Harding, livestream review - dark studio ritualsThursday, 18 June 2020
"Touch her and you die," sings Masetto in telling Don Giovanni to keep away from his Zerlina. There's certainly trouble, though not instant death, when fingers briefly meet. Mozart's dark comedy has much in Da Ponte's text about hands-on business... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera, OperaVision review - natural comedy, musical sublimityMonday, 30 March 2020
Only the birds will be singing at country opera houses around the UK this summer. Glyndebourne seems over-optimistic in declaring that it might be able to launch in July; other companies with shorter seasons have made the regretful but right... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - energised attitudes, lower-level humanismMonday, 16 March 2020
So Susanna and Figaro got married on Saturday, just before the entire Almaviva household and its home, the London Coliseum, went into quarantine. Let's at least celebrate the fact that these splendid singer-actors, with youth especially on the five... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Christopher Gunning, Joe Meek, Tesla QuartetSaturday, 07 March 2020
Christopher Gunning: Symphonies 2, 10 & 12 BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Kenneth Woods (Signum)You’ve probably heard Christopher Gunning’s music without realising it: he’s been a prolific film and television composer for decades. A pupil... Read more... |
Cosi fan tutte, English Touring Opera review - a blissful, uncomplicated delightMonday, 02 March 2020
Cosi fan tutte is, as the opera’s subtitle clearly tells us, “A School for Lovers”. But too often these days it can feel like a school for the audience. Joyless productions lecture us sternly on the battle of the sexes – on chauvinism, feminism,... Read more... |
Andsnes, Mahler Chamber Orchestra Soloists, Wigmore Hall review - conversations with MozartFriday, 21 February 2020
Leif Ove Andsnes’s long-term partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra has already yielded rich fruit, and the Mozart quartets and trio he performed last night with members of the top-notch nomad band proved just as succulent. However, I would... Read more... |
Angelich, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place review - warm embraces from good companionsMonday, 10 February 2020
"New Dawns" as a title smacked a bit of trying to shoehorn a fairly straightforward Aurora programme in to Kings Place's Nature Unwrapped series. Only Dobrinka Tabakova's short and sweet Dawn made the link, and that was old, not new (composed in... Read more... |
Garvey, Quatuor Zaïde, Classical Vauxhall review - vibrant chamber music for allFriday, 07 February 2020
Three concerts, three fascinating venues, seven world-class young(ish) players, an audience of all ages and a musical storytelling event for 200 schoolchildren: this is how to launch a festival with outwardly modest means. Artistic Director of... Read more... |
Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - pure musical essenceWednesday, 15 January 2020
"What is it about Mozart?" asked Sviatoslav Richter in 1982. "Is there a pianist alive who really manages to play him well?...Haydn is infinitely less difficult to play (he's almost easy, in fact). So what is Mozart's secret?" Just over a decade... Read more... |
Clarke, Ränzlöv, The Mozartists, Page, Wigmore Hall - young Mozart among the giantsFriday, 10 January 2020
Assuming the world holds together that long, there will be something we can rely on annually all the way to 2041, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's death: among the celebrations each year, a Wigmore Hall concert like this one, placing Amadeus among... Read more... |
