Classical Reviews

Uchida, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Abbado, Royal Festival Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 10 October 2011

We're living through a golden age of Bruckner conducting. A revolutionary age. Young sparks like Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Ilan Volkov are doing extraordinary things with the Austrian's music, experimenting with speeds and phrasing, reshaping him in a more extraterrestrial, more lithe and modern mould. All of which means that trying to get yourself noticed conducting Bruckner in the 2010s is a bit like trying to get yourself noticed as a footballer in 1970s Brazil. Good luck.

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Britten War Requiem, London Symphony Orchestra, Noseda, Barbican Hall

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 10 October 2011

Nearly 50 years have passed since Britten’s War Requiem premiered at the consecration of the reconstructed Coventry Cathedral in May 1962. The intervening years have seen British military campaigns in the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and while the process and practice of war has changed beyond recognition, the horror that the pacifist Britten perceived so acutely remains the same.

Rostropovich: The Genius of the Cello, BBC Four

David Nice Saturday, 08 October 2011

How can even a generously proportioned documentary do justice to one of the musical world’s greatest life forces? John Bridcut knows what to do: make sure all your interviewees have a close personal association with your chosen giant in one of his many spheres of influence, then get cellist-disciples from Rostropovich’s Class 19 in the Moscow Conservatoire – here Moray Welsh, Natalia Gutman, Karine Georgian and Elizabeth Wilson - to watch and listen to their mentor talking and playing.

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Olga Borodina, Dmitri Yefimov, Barbican Hall

David Nice Saturday, 08 October 2011

In Italian opera, where lustrous Verdi mezzos are rare indeed, Olga Borodina tends to a first-the-music-then-the-words approach. In Russian song, the sole focus of last night's Barbican recital until the second encore, her classy, naturally inflected and beautifully coloured realisation of great as well as more generic native poets leaves you in no doubt what you're supposed to feel and think.

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Pierre Boulez Weekend, Southbank Centre

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 03 October 2011

William Glock once claimed that Pierre Boulez could literally vomit at music he believed to be substandard. I wonder what he would have made of my friend, who fled at the interval of the opening concert of the Southbank festival on Friday blaming Boulez's Domaines for setting off a panic attack.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Weir, Lockenhaus Festival

graham Rickson Saturday, 01 October 2011

Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio in A minor; Shostakovich: Piano Trio in E minor David Trio (Stradivarius)

Coote, Vinke, Philharmonia, Maazel, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice Friday, 30 September 2011

It was bound, in vocal terms, to be a case of Beauty and the Beast. Stefan Vinke, though useful for killer heroic-tenor parts like this one in Mahler’s Song of the Earth, has made some of the ugliest sounds I’ve heard over the past few seasons, ineffable mezzo Alice Coote many of the loveliest, and with great communication, too.

Mahler 2, BBCPO, Mena, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

philip Radcliffe Sunday, 25 September 2011

After producing an overwhelming performance of Mahler’s colossal Second Symphony, rewarded by a 10-minute standing ovation from a packed house, the new chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic could not be accused of easing himself into the job. One might have thought that Juanjo Mena (pronounced Huanho Mayna, being Basque) might have started off with a splash of Spanish colour, with Rodrigo and De Falla, which must be in his blood. But no, although that will come in his next concert.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Varèse, Giulini

graham Rickson Saturday, 24 September 2011

Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2 Roger Woodward - piano (Celestial Harmonies)

Schubert Recital 2, Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Friday, 23 September 2011

Some great singers know how to modulate their beautiful instruments for long vocal life; others push technique and expression to the limits in countless concerts of a lifetime before burnout. Baritone Christian Gerhaher, it seems, belongs to the beautiful and the secure.