Prokofiev
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas Fazil Say (Warner Classics)“This is a 605 minute piece containing 32 sonatas.” There's some bewildering verbiage from pianist Fazil Say near the back of Warners’ booklet, Say describing the creation of his ‘Fazil Say Beethoven Orchestra“, and practicing the piano sonatas in front of an ‘imaginary Beethoven’, “brimming with boundless energy and musical spirit.” It's easier to understand the relief felt by Say when 11 months of recording sessions came to an end in May 2019: “…a strange weight lifted from me. I felt like I was in a huge void.” Predictably Read more ...
David Nice
When Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski first bounced on to the concert scene, he seemed part will-o-the-wisp, part jack-in-the-box, a real personality of coruscating brilliance. Time has passed, and deeper, more reflective qualities have emerged alongside the fireworks, an impression very much underlined by his intent in launching his latest CD with Prokofiev's Tales of an Old Grandmother - short, predominantly introspective miniatures which are difficult to place in a concert programme. Indeed, I'd not heard them in that context until last night, where their place at the start of an Read more ...
David Nice
For the first 20 or so minutes and the second encore of this generous recital, I turned into a Trifonite, in thrall to the 28-year-old Russian pianist's communicative powers. Has Scriabin, in an imperious sweep from early to late, ever made more consistent sense? Could anyone else transcribe the opening sleigh-ride into mysticism and back of Rachmaninov's "choral symphony" The Bells, his most lustrously orchestrated movement, and come out shining?Even when he's bending the music to his own seemingly mercurial will, Trifonov is never less than watchable and worth hearing, though whether his Read more ...
graham.rickson
Floating Islands: Guitar music by Axel Borup-Jørgensen Frederik Munk Larsen (guitar) (OUR Recordings)Carl Nielsen cast a long shadow over the generation of Danish composers who succeeded him, and there's mention here of post-war musicians trying to reconcile “Danishness” with modernity. One of them was Axel Borup-Jørgensen, a maverick modernist who ploughed a very individual furrow from the late 1940s until his death in 2012. I’d urge anyone curious to seek out the OUR label’s glorious Marin, a lavish visual take on one of Borup-Jørgensen’s more extravagant orchestral pieces. Then buy Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Your first thought on hearing there's a new Matthew Bourne Romeo and Juliet might well be 'doesn't it exist already?' So obvious does this marriage of high drama, lush iconic score, and Britain's premier dance maker seem that you might well be forgiven for assuming it had happened years ago. In fact, the show Bourne presented at Sadler's Wells this week is brand new this year. So is it a worthy addition to the choreographer's stable of reimagined ballets? Up to a point. It won't knock the immortal male swans off the top spot, but it's still a hell of a night at the theatre.The familiar Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Montrealers exude a particular kind of happiness and have wonderfully snappy expressions to convey it: “Chu correc”, means ‘I’m fine’, and “C’est l’fun” means...exactly what it looks like. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a distinctly proud Montrealer (“It’s where I live, it’s where my partner lives, it’s where my cats live...it is where I feel truly and fully myself,” he has said), and that special effervescence was plainly visible in both of his concerts at the Proms with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.In the second concert, he brought it notably to the Suite from Richard Strauss's Der Read more ...
David Nice
In the Netherlands, Mark Wigglesworth is already a musical legend for his work with Dutch youth orchestras. Hopefully, in addition to the year and a bit when he wrought miracles at English National Opera, he will become so in the UK after his training of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. That culminated in last night's Prom, with more than a little help from co-inspirer Nicola Benedetti. It's worth beginning at the very end to note how, 12 years on from the (then) Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's game-changing Prom with Gustavo Dudamel, the NYOGB not only Read more ...
David Nice
On the UK's biggest day of shame, it was some relief to tap in to the fury of the Russian people at a much greater national degradation (Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Hitler's in 1941). Though it works even better at the end of the first, "Natasha Rostova" part of Prokofiev's selective homage to Tolstoy, his choral epigraph gave us a good blasting at the start in the firm profiling of WNO forces under their music director Tomáš Hanus. The operatic War and Peace, though, is no more just about big gestures than the novel, and Prokofiev's astuteness in characterisation, which can be as assured as Read more ...
graham.rickson
Martinů: The Complete Music for Violin and Orchestra Bohuslav Matoušek (violin), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Christopher Hogwood (Hyperion)You can't overdose on Martinů: four reissued discs of concertante music for violin and orchestra might sound heavy going but I challenge anyone to get bored. There's an embarrassment of riches here, most of it seldom heard in the UK. You could do worse than start with the sublime Rhapsody-Concerto, soloist Bohuslav Matoušek switching to viola. Martinů characterised his lyrical late period as marking a shift from “geometry to fantasy”, and here the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In the fourth performance of their UK tour, with Vassily Sinaisky replacing an indisposed Yuri Temirkanov, the St Petersburg Philharmonic gave a warm and rousing performance at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Prokofiev’s First Symphony – written in "classical" style as a homage to Haydn – saw the orchestra start off with a deep and meaty tone, which gave a welcome depth to some of Prokofiev’s music, though it proved a bit bulky for many of the symphony’s light touches.The orchestra’s interpretation of the work was certainly more rooted in the romantic era than the classical. Sinaisky’s conducting Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Well, I didn’t expect that – and judging from the way the rest of the audience reacted, nor did anyone else. After Cristian Măcelaru slammed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra full speed into the final chord of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, there was a stunned silence, broken by gasps. And then cheers, as a smiling, visibly drained Măcelaru gestured back at the orchestra with both thumbs up. True, this is a symphony with a fearsome reputation: a rarity even today, when the idea that Vaughan Williams is anything other than a major 20th century modernist looks as parochial as his Read more ...
Calidore String Quartet
Classical musicians spend much of their lives inhabiting the realms of the past. To effectively practise and perform the music of Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and countless others, performers must combine research and personal intuition to time travel into the era of these great composers’ lives. After months of exploration, as one begins to comprehend the social customs, politics and science of the era, a clearer understanding of the composer's individual personality and musical aesthetic begin to emerge.Many performers spend their entire life unravelling issues such as how Beethoven’s Read more ...