Classical Reviews
Aurora Orchestra, Kings Place review - experimental work in an immersive settingSunday, 26 November 2023
The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottír found her work put under a strangely unforgiving lens when it was featured in Tár, the now infamous Todd Field film made in 2022 starring Cate Blanchett as a tempestuously exacting female conductor. In a scene where Lydia Tár is taking a masterclass at the Julliard, she savages a student who is conducting a string quartet playing Thorvaldsdottír’s music, saying it sounds like “tuning up”. Read more...
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Morison, Immler, BBCSO, Bychkov, Barbican review - a Kafka journey and a mighty landmarkSaturday, 25 November 2023
The German composer Detlev Glanert, taught by Hans Werner Henze and a past collaborator with Oliver Knussen, received a Proms commission as far back as 1996. He remains, it might be fair to say, a shadowy presence here despite his prominence back home. Read more... |
Grosvenor, SCO, Emelyanychev, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - lightness of touch and a sprinkling of humourFriday, 24 November 2023
Nobody would describe Felix Mendelssohn as a fringe composer, but his piano concertos aren’t exactly central classical repertoire either. They lack the foundational status of Mozart’s and the high Romantic seriousness of Beethoven’s or Brahms’, and Mendelssohn doesn’t help himself in the way that an air of the faintly hilarious hangs around his First Piano Concerto. Read more... |
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - championing the rich and rareFriday, 24 November 2023
Sir Mark Elder’s zest for exploring fresh territory with the forces of the Hallé is unquenched even in his final season as music director. And who better to introduce the Stabat Mater of Rossini – a late flowering of the operatic wizard’s powers – than he, a champion of the rich and rare from operas past? Read more... |
Accentus, Insula orchestra, Equilbey, Barbican review - radiant French choral masterpiecesTuesday, 21 November 2023
Last night saw two pieces of late 19th century French choral music – one a hugely popular staple of choral societies around the world, the other a complete novelty, lost for a hundred years – brought together in fascinating juxtaposition by the French period-instrument orchestra Insula, under their founding conductor Laurence Equilbey. Read more... |
Selaocoe, Schimpelsberger, LSO, Ward, Barbican review - force of nature crowns dance jamboreeFriday, 17 November 2023
It was good of the EFG London Jazz Festival to support this concert and bring in a different audience from the one the LSO is used to. But how to define it? Jazz only briefly figured in works by Gary Carpenter, Bartók, Barber and Abel Selaocoe. The only category would seem to be All Things Vital and Dancing. Anyone who’d come just for the phenomenal South Africa-born cellist, singer and composer must have been riveted by the rest, too. Read more... |
West-Eastern Divan Ensemble, Michael Barenboim, QEH review - enchantment and convivialityMonday, 13 November 2023
What a month, and what a day, for Michael Barenboim to bring the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble to London. Read more... |
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Currie, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - maximum minimalismSaturday, 11 November 2023
Chameleon among orchestras, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra hung up its habitual classical cloak in favour of an evening of 20th and 21st century minimalism, curated, presented, and conducted by the star percussionist Colin Currie. Read more... |
Perfection of a Kind: Britten vs Auden, City of London Sinfonia, QEH review - the odd coupleTuesday, 07 November 2023
“Underneath the abject willow/ Lover, sulk no more;/ Act from thought should quickly follow:/ What is thinking for?” In 1936, early in their tempestuous friendship, WH Auden wrote a poem for Benjamin Britten that urged the younger artist to pursue his passions – musical and erotic – and curb his fearful longing for comfort and safety. Read more... |
The Creation, Choirs of King's College & New College Oxford, Philharmonia, Hyde, King's College Chapel, Cambridge - sublime setting for mundane performanceMonday, 06 November 2023
“Let his words resound on high,” sings the choir in the final chorus of The Creation. In King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, it is hard not to want to look up, to admire the splendour of the largest fan vaulting anywhere in Europe. King’s truly is hard to beat as a setting in which to hear Haydn’s oratorio. Read more... |
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