piano
David Nice
If there was ever a time for the inevitable "Rach Three” (piano concerto, not symphony) in the composer’s 150th anniversary year – and I confess I dodged other occasions – it might as well have come in the fresh and racy shape of Leif Ove Andsnes' interpretation and the equally alert, forward-moving playing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under a kindred spirit, its principal conductor Edward Gardner.In short, there was no slack either in the concerto or an even greater masterpiece, the Choral Symphony The Bells, and yet no lack of emotional intensity either. Andsnes is usually Read more ...
David Nice
All five finalists in the Leeds International Piano Competition, at which Pavel Kolesnikov was one of the jurors, should have been given tickets, transport and accommodation to hear his Wigmore recital the evening after the prizegiving. Not that supreme imagination can be taught, but to witness the degree of physical ease (and freeflowing concert wear) that allows all the miracles to happen would be a good lesson to so many tension-racked pianists, including some of Kolesnikov’s peers.As always, the connections he made in his programme were surprising, though obvious once you thought about it Read more ...
David Nice
How do you make a two-part final featuring five piano concertos work as a couple of totally satisfying programmes? First, give a wide list of concerto options, ask each pianist for two choices, settle on what will make the best contrasts – and then engage the brilliant Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra of which he has been chief conductor since 2021 as partnersThe fact remains that, despite differing levels of interpretation, the five finalists, all in their twenties, were as one with their fellow players and their conductor. It takes both elements to pull that Read more ...
Robert Beale
“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.But with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy sticking with it through thick and thin (including Covid), they got to the final tape last night at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music. The hall didn’t even exist when it all began: the first performances were at the Royal Northern College of Music. But the idea has slowly taken flight and Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The high level of entries for this year’s Leeds Piano Competition – 366, almost twice the number who entered in 2018 – is just one reminder that any young pianist wanting to make their name today is negotiating shark-infested waters. Technical excellence is a given – if you want to make a living, you need to have something extra to win the support of concert halls and critics.When I first see the 25-year-old Lithuanian Ignas Maknickas (the ‘c’ is pronounced ‘ts’) in St James Park, he doesn’t look as if he’s suffering too badly from the pressure – he’s tapping idly on his phone while surveying Read more ...
Robert Beale
A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two of the greatest pianists of their generation, who met at the Royal Northern College of Music, celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first collaboration there. Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe played duets for two pianos: they’ve done it throughout their careers, and in Donohoe’s case with other celebrated partners. But there was a special chemistry between the two old friends that made for a magical evening.Their first appearance on the same platform was actually Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath with a disconcerting pair of shades. But the super-heroine pianist, who played Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, turned out to contribute the (comparatively) restrained and low-key element of a London Symphony Orchestra programme that culminated in a wall-shaking performance of Saint-Saëns’ "Organ" Symphony, with Anna Lapwood at the manuals.In this, the third of Sir Antonio Pappano’s opening quartet of the LSO season’s concerts, glittering (or thunderous) panache of Read more ...
David Nice
A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first half by rising to the challenge of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” - a title he suggests, in his series of first-rate online essays about the sonatas, might be replaced more appropriately with “Titanic”?Absolutely; the focus and stamina were such that a sinking would have been impossible. Any difficulties rest with us, and I confess I have a problem with the biggest movements. Like much in late Beethoven, the material sometimes seems to elude easy grasp Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
You don’t need me to tell you that this particular law enforcer has served up yet another meaty helping of genius. It’s what we expect. So here she is, over-delivering again on her 12th album. A salve for the soul, Joan Wasser’s delicious voice and masterful songwriting are woefully underexposed and appreciated. But, actually, that’s not a bad thing – let’s keep her secret for now.One of her many skills is how intimate her delivery is, how she makes you feel she is confiding just in you, baring her soul because she just knows you’ve shared the same experiences. She soldiers on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Contrary to popular belief, not all music journalists get off on being snide about the same old easy-to-slate bands. When something like this album arrives in my review schedule, my instinct is to seek the good, to stick two fingers up to my sneering peers. Unfortunately Snow Patrol’s new album is proving a challenge. I am struggling to find the positives.But let’s try. By now, you will know the drill with Snow Patrol. Kind of early Coldplay but lathered in (even more) overwrought emotion and lighters-in-the-air effusiveness. Their songs “Run” and “Chasing Cars” are staples of stadium Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ryuichi Sakamoto can be heard here, on Opus, surrounded by silence, shuffling at the keyboard, off-mic rustles and tells, recorded in the last year of his life, in September 2022 – he died early in the following year – as he sat to make his final performances.Not in public – there's not even the ghost of an audience here – but at Tokyo's NHK Broadcast Center's 509 Studio, in a solo performance filmed by his son Neo Sora, for which this is the soundtrack. Five decades of film and Yellow Magic music are spread between the two hands of one performer across 88 keys, and it feels like he's playing Read more ...
David Nice
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the sweet dream of Florence Price’s Adoration fit that bill. But An American in Paris sounded completely different from usual, its radical side highlighted, following Ives’s Three Places in New England and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Andante for Strings.Enterprising Tom Fetherstonhaugh and the (equally) young professionals of his Fantasia Orchestra have been regular visitors to Proms at St Jude's Music & Literary Festival – to give the full, unwieldy name of Read more ...