Classical Reviews

Wolfgang Rihm Day, Barbican

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Saturday, 13 March 2010

Wolfgang Rihm: 'Sod the Hadron Collidor. You want a decent particle-smasher? Look no further than Wolfgang Rihm's brain.'

It's hard to miss German composer Wolfgang Rihm. He has an enormous head. There it is, bulging from his giant frame, a big, friendly grin slapped onto it while he wanders around the Barbican on his celebratory day, none of it going to waste. Listen to his prolifically combustible music, the million and one ideas hurtling about with the energy of a school playground and the intensity of a burning sun, and you soon realise that all that cranial space is probably quite necessary.

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London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican Hall

David Nice Friday, 12 March 2010

Adams began with two Debussy preludes swept by a different kind of wind in Colin Matthews's ingenious, luminous orchestrations. Well, windswept was the idea, but there was no more elemental scouring here than by all accounts there had been in the Britten Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes on Sunday (interesting parallel programming, though).

Comment

Bach B minor Mass, The Sixteen, Barbican Hall

David Nice Thursday, 11 March 2010

As one who came to know the B minor Mass singing in a clogged, 150-strong choir, I welcomed the authentic-movement rush in the 1980s to whittle it down to What Bach Might Have Wanted (if, indeed, he had lived to hear his ideal religious compendium performed in its entirety). For a while, it shrivelled to anorexic dimensions in the shape of Joshua Rifkin's one-voice-per-choral-line hypothesis.

London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican Hall

Edward Seckerson Monday, 08 March 2010

What would you imagine the composer John Adams might choose to conduct – apart, that is, from a little something he himself made earlier? Well, the first of two London Symphony Orchestra concerts this week brought no big surprises: Sibelius’ Sixth Symphony was in essence a little like returning to his minimalist roots – a bunch of insistent melodic cells and dancing ostinati. Flanking it, as if to reassert that everything Adams writes is essentially operatic, was orchestral music...

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marc Minkowski, Barbican

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 08 March 2010

Pergolesi: 'We know that a member of the audience struck Pergolesi's head with an orange at the premiere of the opera L’Olimpiade.'

It always repays to push a world-class orchestra beyond their comfort zone. The BBC Symphony's sound emerged from the refashioning hands of period specialist Marc Minkowski like a naked body from a cold shower: convulsively invigorated and invigorating all those that knocked into it. It was a joy to hear: the best, most intriguing period-playing I've heard for quite a while. For sure the orchestra were more comfortable in Stravinsky's Pulcinella, which went off like a spinning...

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Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jansons, RFH

David Nice Saturday, 06 March 2010

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.

OAE, Ivan Fischer, QEH

Edward Seckerson Friday, 05 March 2010

If Beethoven’s Third Symphony Eroica was the seismic upheaval, not just for Beethoven but for the entire symphonic movement, then the Second Symphony was most certainly the pre-shock.

Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, Barbican

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Thursday, 04 March 2010

Shuffling about the podium like a cha-cha-chaing Jack Lemmon, slam-dunking his first beats, kicking out his heels for second beats, épéeing the trombone entries like a toy toreador, it wasn't hard to see why Lorin Maazel gets such a regular critical roasting. During The Rite of Spring he was almost playing up the vulgarian tag. "You want vulgar? I'll give you vulgar. Take that ridiculously elongated glissando! And that totally out-of-place ritardando! And that gob-...

Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, Barbican Hall

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 02 March 2010

In every partnership there is a leader, and it’s not always the featured name. While the hall was packed with Ma followers for this rare cello-and-piano recital, what emerged was a richly sensitising foretaste of what the Emanuel Ax residency is going to offer over the next fortnight. This is one marvellous pianist.

Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival Hall

Jonathan Wikeley Monday, 01 March 2010

Was it Chopin’s birthday or wasn’t it? To be honest, no one at last night’s Royal Festival Hall concert probably gave a damn, so wrapped up were they in Maurizio Pollini’s playing. And what playing it was too. The man just sits down and gets on with it – there’s none of that airy-fairy flamboyance and arm waving that certain younger...