Classical Reviews
Gawain, BarbicanSaturday, 17 May 2014
Part of the Birtwistle at 80 series at the Barbican, this not-quite-semi-staged Gawain ended up being held back a little by its shoestring production, where a straight concert performance might have transcended its limitations. Read more... |
Yende, Vaughan, Cadogan HallFriday, 16 May 2014
Lovely singer, consummate pianist, shame about the programme. “Art song” is a rather prissy term, but we could have done with a few to ballast a diet of old pop – French chansons, Italian canzonettas, Spanish canciones, Victor Herbert tralala. Even a few substantial operatic arias with piano accompaniment made have made a difference. Read more... |
Lugansky, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 15 May 2014
Am I alone in a readiness to sacrifice all four Rachmaninov piano concertos – though maybe not the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – in favour of the second sets of Preludes and Études-Tableaux? Probably not, after last night, when Nikolay Lugansky unfurled the 13 Op. 32 Preludes as one discombobulating symphonic cosmos. This is probably as close as we can come today to being in the presence of Rachmaninov himself, the greatest recorded pianist I know. Read more... |
Apollo's Fire, St John's Smith SquareSaturday, 10 May 2014
Last time I saw Apollo's Fire perform they danced. Halfway through the concert the chamber orchestra just put music stands aside, continued playing their instruments, and broke into a stately minuet on the Wigmore Hall stage. Read more... |
Schwanewilms, Connolly, Crowe, LSO, Elder, BarbicanFriday, 09 May 2014
Mozart usually makes a fine concert bedfellow for his most devoted admirer among later composers, Richard Strauss. Read more... |
Ysaÿe Sonatas, Ibragimova, Royal College of MusicFriday, 09 May 2014
Next week, the 28-year-old Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova will step into a studio, to record some of the most technically unforgiving works in her instrument's repertoire, the solo sonatas by the Belgian violinist, composer and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931). She has just performed them over two evenings at the Royal College of Music. Read more... |
Concert Dansé, Symphony Hall, BirminghamMonday, 05 May 2014
On the back wall of Birmingham Symphony Hall’s great oval space, two musicians are poised on a glass balcony that gives the illusion of not being there at all. A small square of warm light picks them out, vivid against the hall’s darkness. So framed, Saint-Saëns’ gentle Prière for cello and organ keeps its intimacy even in that large space, the two instruments blending into one equal sound that is clear, golden, and not too sweet. Read more... |
Shostakovich Cycle, Jerusalem Quartet, Wigmore HallThursday, 01 May 2014
Under what circumstances can Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet, the most (over)played of the 15, sound both as harrowing as it possibly can be and absolutely fresh? Well, the context helps: hearing it at the breaking heart of the fourth concert in the Jerusalem Quartet’s Shostakovich cycle gave it extra resonance with the works on either side of it. Read more... |
Tippett Retrospective, Osborne, Heath Quartet, Wigmore HallSunday, 27 April 2014
For those of us who’d held fast to the generalisation that Michael Tippett went awry after 1962, it seemed emblematic that pianist Steven Osborne and the Heath Quartet were never to meet in a concert of two halves. After all, didn’t Tippett’s music split and splinter into a thousand, often iridescent atoms after his second opera, King Priam? Its satellite piece, the Second Piano Sonata, seems to sit restlessly, and quite deliberately, on the fault line. Read more... |
Quartet for the End of Time, Village UndergroundThursday, 24 April 2014
Take a cushion or two among the beautiful young people gathered around the players – no Proms Arena crowd, this - pull up a chair or find your standing place; sit bolt upright, lie back, stretch your legs, tweet during the music if you like (an invitation thankfully declined). Read more... |
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