Classical Reviews
Orchestre National de France, Gatti, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 08 September 2010
It was one of those moments that every conductor (and orchestra) dreads: “The Procession of the Sage” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is in rip-roaring full cry, percussion grinding and scratching, high trumpet screeching – but Daniele Gatti, it would seem, loses a bar somewhere and gives his Orchestre National de France a premature cut-off, leaving the entire brass section between a rock and a hard place. Stop or play on? An ignominious collapse ensues – as big a blunder as I’... Read more...
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RSNO, Denève; Ensemble Matheus, Spinosi, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 07 September 2010
Is that asking a lot? Probably not, considering what's already been achieved at this year's BBC Proms. Looking back on it, last night felt implausibly rich yet gloriously digestible, too, at least in retrospect. I couldn't have predicted that I would be so swept away by the jam-packed wonders that came from Jean-Christophe Spinosi's Ensemble Matheus and their soloists. Read more... |
The Lying Down Concert: Earthrise, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 05 September 2010
We should lie down to listen to music much more often. Gravity pulls away the thought and frown lines, smoothes the intellectual tracks and folds on the face, while you feel the blood in your head pumping lushly to dreamier parts of your brain. Joanna MacGregor’s If-A-Tree festival at the Royal Opera House this weekend may well be hitting some fey bases along its way, but Earthrise: The Lying Down Concert - was a spectacularly enjoyable opening event. Read more... |
Mattila, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Royal Albert HallSunday, 05 September 2010
My abiding memory of the Berlin Philharmonic’s second Prom under Sir Simon Rattle on Saturday will be of 6,000 people listening with rapt, or at any rate silent, concentration to Schoenberg, Webern Read more... |
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Royal Albert HallFriday, 03 September 2010
Call me a paradoxically wary old Mahler nut, but I reckon that given 24 months of anniversary overkill, it might keep things fresh to catch each of the symphonies live no more than once a year. So, having heard an Everest of a First Symphony from Abbado in Lucerne last August, I thought Rattle's might be the team likeliest to do this far-from-beginner's symphony similar justice. Read more... |
Gerhaher, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Blomstedt, Royal Albert HallThursday, 02 September 2010
Yet again I leave a Herbert Blomstedt concert with a sense of wonderment and bemusement. Wonderment at the extraordinary music-making that this man is capable of. Bemusement as to why he is not better known, his talents not more widely recognised, his services not more often called upon in this, his 83rd year. Last night's masterful Prom saw him leading the youngsters of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester first into the heavens of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony and then into...
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theartsdesk at the Presteigne Festival of Music and the ArtsWednesday, 01 September 2010
The Presteigne Festival, which has just ended after a packed long weekend of events of various shapes and sizes, is a music fest with a profile very much its own. Presteigne is one of those enchanting pocket county towns that proliferate along the Welsh borders (Monmouth, Montgomery and Denbigh are others): towns whose municipal status seems to belong in some child’s picture book, and is in fact a thing of the distant past. |
Tognetti, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Cadogan HallWednesday, 01 September 2010
Australia has many fine exports – wine, women, gap year anecdotes – but increasingly it is her orchestras that are setting the standard. Read more... |
Vogt, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Gardiner, Royal Albert HallMonday, 30 August 2010
Short of rolling around the podium like a delirious pig in a mudbath, Sir John Eliot Gardiner couldn't have hidden his enjoyment of the warm, plush sounds and well-upholstered vibrato of this wonderfully old-fashioned orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, less well at last night's Prom. As he embarked on one of the broadest, most unashamedly Romantic openings to Dvořák's Eighth Symphony I have ever heard, I wondered what the hell his years of all-out warfare on modern...
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Shaham, Minnesota Orchestra, Vänskä, Royal Albert HallSunday, 29 August 2010
A great deal of scepticism greeted the release of a new Beethoven symphony cycle from Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra in the mid-2000s. Would this lot really be able say anything that hadn't already been said by the hundred or so other cycles? Could anyone really find anything very new or fresh to say about these warhorses? The answer then was yes. And the answer last night in their Prom's performance of Beethoven's Ninth was also a resounding yes. Hardly surprising if you'd...
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