Classical Reviews
The Dream of Gerontius, LPO, Elder, Royal Festival HallSunday, 27 January 2013
We’re still in the foothills of the Southbank Centre’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, but already the harmonic ground is becoming unsteady underfoot. Last weekend saw the gemütlichkeit of Johann Strauss give way to the brutality of Richard Strauss, exposed us to the moistly chromatic flesh of Salome that lies behind the seven veils, and showed just a hint of Schoenbergian ankle. Read more...
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BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Atherton, St David's Hall, CardiffSaturday, 26 January 2013
The Britten centenary will, among much else, inspire performances of his comparatively under-regarded instrumental works - pieces like the cello suites and the string quartets, already sampled in brilliant performances at last week’s Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival. Read more... |
St Lawrence String Quartet, LSO String Orchestra, Adams, LSO St Luke'sThursday, 24 January 2013
“It looks like the Coconut Lounge,” remarked John Adams as he stepped up jauntily to introduce the first of two big string pieces composed 30 years apart. The folk with their drinks at the candlelit tables, though, were never allowed to sit back and let it all wash over them. Read more... |
Mattila, Hampson, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallSunday, 20 January 2013
This may have been the official, lavish fanfare for the Southbank’s The Rest is Noise Festival, which if the hard sell hasn’t hit you yet is a year-long celebration of 20th Century music in its cultural context and based around Alex Ross's bestseller of the same name. For Jurowski and the LPO, though, it was very much through-composed programme planning as usual, though with a sweeping bow towards the festival theme of how modernism evolved as it did. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Dvořák, GallaySaturday, 19 January 2013
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Upshaw, London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 18 January 2013
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that name. Or you could learn a lot in a short space of time from John Adams’s mini-residency with the LSO at the Barbican. Read more... |
Ashkar, Halle Orchestra, de Ridder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterFriday, 18 January 2013
Once upon a time, Gyorgy Ligeti heard a rehearsal performance of a piece of music he wrote soon after graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Just once. Then it was banned by the Hungarian apparatchiks responsible for the arts and he had to wait another 20 years to hear it played in public. Read more... |
Yevgeny Sudbin, Westminster Cathedral HallMonday, 14 January 2013
It was the kind of programme that great pianist Vladimir Horowitz used to pioneer, with the simple balm of Scarlatti offset by Scriabin’s flights of fancy, and a dash of virtuoso fireworks to conclude. Read more... |
Grosvenor, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Litton, Barbican HallSaturday, 12 January 2013
Elgar declared a “massive hope in the future” as the human programme behind his epic First Symphony’s final exultant sprint. That hope was sprinkled like gold dust around the featured artists of this all-English concert. There are good reasons to be optimistic about the effective, colourful scores of 32-year-old Anna Clyne; we know that Benjamin Grosvenor, her junior by 12 years, is already a pianist of mercurial assurance, a real front-runner. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bartók, Ligeti, Jocelyn Pook, TchaikovskySaturday, 12 January 2013
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Bach: The Six Cello Suites Peter Wispelwey (Evil Penguin Records) 
Bartók, Eötvös, Ligeti – Violin Concertos Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern/Peter Eötvös (Naïve)Pages
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