RFH
sue.steward
The dreadlocks are gone, the dark suit is gone, the acoustic guitar which was his faithful travelling companion during the four years as Brazilian Minister of Culture, is also gone. Instead, Gilberto Gil skipped on stage with a cool, short, grey haircut framing his beautifully sculpted features, wearing a white shirt and check trousers, and strapped on a Fender Stratocaster. As his first notes chimed in the air, his six musicians stood poised in front of a magnificent, graffiti-collaged banner stretching across the back stage, then entered the jaunty, two-step rhythm which launched an evening Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A packed Festival Hall and a cheering, stamping, standing ovation – hardly the usual welcome for an evening of contemporary music. Sitting, wizened and waistcoat-clad, at the centre of the front row was the reason: Ravi Shankar. Framed by the mathematical minimalism of John Adams’ Shaker Loops and Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Shankar’s first-ever symphony was last night given its world premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.At 90 years old – an age at which few composers are working, let alone breaking new ground – Shankar has produced Symphony, the culmination of decades of Read more ...
David Nice
Perhaps we'd better get the Prokofiev part of the opening concert out of the way first. I have a real problem with Russian whizz pianist of the moment Denis Matsuev. His iron-clad technique and heavyweight thunder still leave some room for quieter playing, but where were the atmosphere or the bright nimbleness in the tour de force of the Third Piano Concerto? True, you feel safe in Matsuev's hands from the word go, and fiendish elements in the solo role which Prokofiev wrote for his own chameleonic keyboard genius and which stretch even as marvellous a pianist as Martha Argerich to the Read more ...
david.cheal
It takes quite something to be able to hold the attention of a packed Royal Festival Hall with nothing but an acoustic guitar, a piano, and a bunch of songs. Two men who have that something are Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III, a pair of folky old goats who have been mates for 30-odd years, and here, performing as part of Thompson’s Southbank Meltdown season, they kept me - and I suspect many others - enthralled with their songcraft, their voices, their bone-dry humour, and in Thompson’s case with his astonishing virtuoso guitar-picking – when he plays, it’s hard to believe that Read more ...
david.cheal
So anyway, when I told my three teenagers that I was off to see Randy Newman, there was a collective yawn and a mild snort of derision, which (and I think I know them well enough to interpret their snorts of derision) said, in effect, “Well, he’s just some crumbly guy who writes sweet songs for Toy Story. Why would anyone actually want to go and see him sing?” A response began to form in my head: that Randy Newman has been described by some as the greatest living American songwriter; that his songs cover some pretty big topics – racism, the slave trade, German child murderers of the 1930s, Read more ...
David Nice
It already has the finest balance in its team of house conductors, and fortunately - though few are more sought after worldwide - Vladimir Jurowski and Yannick Nézet-Séguin have pledged to extend their contracts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.Since taking up his post as the LPO's Principal Conductor at the beginning of the 2007-8 season, Russian-born Jurowski has led the most inspiring programming on the London scene for decades, stretching his players and the orchestra's box office potential in unusual repertoire including a festival focus on the works of Alfred Schnittke last Read more ...
David Nice
For many of us, this was bound to be an emotional evening. Noëlle Mann, doyenne of all things Prokofievian on the editorial, archival, teaching and performing fronts, died peacefully at home last Friday, and it was to her that Vladimir Jurowski dedicated a typically bold programme of Prokofiev's late epic for cello and orchestra, the Symphony-Concerto, and a big but rather less focused symphony by his closest composer-friend Nikolay Myaskovsky. Perhaps it's presumptuous to speak for the departed; but I could hear Noëlle responding vitally to her master's voice, applauding Jurowski for Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A great wall of noise greets the audience as it settles in to the Royal Festival Hall - the sound of some heavy outer planet’s radio frequency, a subtly oscillating drone that recalls NASA’s recordings of radio emissions from Saturn made by the Cassini spacecraft. Lou Reed’s work station for the night is set centre-stage, behind a rack of electronic machinery, a row of guitars awaiting their signal stacked behind him, but for 20 minutes or so there’s just that continuum of noise – in fact the sound of three guitars leant up against a stack of live amps. Is this to soften up the audience’s Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Joanna Wos (left, no relation to Jonathan Ross) put in a stellar performance last night singing in Gorecki's Third Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall with the LPO, singing the part made famous on the million-selling recording by Dawn Upshaw. To get there, she drove for three days and nights from Poland arriving yesterday afternoon. What a trouper. It would be unfair to judge her against Upshaw in the circumstances. But I will. She didn't quite have Upshaw's power, but she was splendidly expressive. She even reminded me, strangely, at times of Victoria de los Angeles. And the LPO seemed Read more ...
David Nice
Why, a modish reader might ask, did I go to hear a rum-looking cove conducting a classical lollipop at the Festival Hall when I might have tasted the latest fruits of a controversial prodigy over at the Barbican? First, because there's plenty of time to wait and see whether bumptious wunderkind Alex Prior will get beyond the derivative, lurid monsterworks he's currently producing. Second, because the immensely likeable cove, French-born Stéphane Denève, is so busy transfiguring his Royal Scottish National Orchestra that we Londoners all too rarely get to see him. And last, because you can't Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
If all orchestras inspire a sense of loyalty to some degree, then the Philharmonia perhaps does it better than most. Mackerras is still performing with them, 54 years after he first conducted the orchestra; so is Maazel, who has clocked up 41 years, on and off. There’s Ashkenazy and Dohnányi. And then of course there’s Riccardo Muti, who appears to have been given the unofficial title of conductor-in-chief of anniversaries.He was there in 2007 to celebrate his own 35th anniversary with the Philharmonia; he was there in 2005 for the diamond jubilee; and he was there again last night for their Read more ...
David Nice
There was I, up to that point, very grateful to be hearing so fresh an approach to a heavyweight, admiring the way the crack Bavarian players sang and danced in every line that so often stays numb until the mechanics of horror let rip, but wondering what the many younger listeners in the audience might be taking from the masterclass. They would sense the shape and urgency of Shostakovich's symphonic argument, but would they feel what the likes of Rostropovich and Svetlanov always told us about the infinite suffering of the late Stalin years, followed by the ambiguous transcendence of 1953, Read more ...