Classical Reviews

Madrigals and Scarlatti, Lufthansa Baroque Festival

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 17 May 2010

"Is it music or just a bit weird?" Robert Hollingworth, director of Baroque vocal specialists I Fagiolini, was posing the question of Gesualdo, the infamous oddball composer of the late 16th century - a sort of musical Caravaggio - whose capricious way with just about every aspect of composition (and social norms: he was a murderer) made him a poster boy for the 20th century. It's a question, however, that could quite easily apply to any great pioneer. The best music is always on the cusp...

Philip Glass Ensemble, Koyaanisqatsi, The Dome, Brighton

Thomas H Green Saturday, 15 May 2010

One of the hottest tickets at this year's Brighton festival is Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi accompanied by live soundtrack performance from the Philip Glass Ensemble. Sold out for weeks beforehand, there are touts outside but most of the middle-aged Bohemian audience seem to have bought their tickets well in advance. The reason it's such a draw is that Koyaanisqatsi is a cult whose enthusiasts are multifarious.

Comment

MacMillan premiere, Repin, LSO, Gergiev, Barbican Hall

David Nice Thursday, 13 May 2010

"There is not one idea," wrote that intemperate critic Eduard Hanslick about Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel, "that does not get its neck broken by the speed with which the next lands on its head." Rather a compliment, I've always thought, and certainly so as applied to James MacMillan's new Violin Concerto. As soloist Vadim Repin and conductor Valery Gergiev whirled us tumultuously through its hyperactive songs and dances, there was so much I wanted to savour, to hear again.

Christian & Tanja Tetzlaff, Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Christian Tetzlaff: 'with his light clean tone he sounded not like a celebrated soloist but a melder, a listener and a joiner-in'

Chamber music is a highly motivational experience - here is a group of instruments of quite different qualities parading, fighting, ganging up, inviting each other’s new ideas, dialoguing, and all this variety heightening the build-up to the moment when all instruments proclaim unanimity in a grand finish, or (even better) huddle up in mutual creative conspiracy and conjure a mysterious little spell that makes the outsider long to be part of it. All of which was present last night in both the...

Resonances at the Wallace Collection

joe Muggs Monday, 10 May 2010

'Classical babe' Natalie Clein is expressive with Walton and Bach

It's an admirable project: to recast the interiors of stately homes as immersive artworks, a musical recital combined with sound installations designed to make the viewer look anew at their surroundings. Certainly as I entered the hallway of Hertford House in Marylebone, where the Wallace Collection is housed, the rich, shifting tones of Simon Fisher Turner's electronic sound manipulations filled the air like perfume, amplifying the opulence of the surroundings and making me – and others –...

Comment

Leonskaja, BBCSO, Bĕlohlávek, Barbican Hall

David Nice Sunday, 09 May 2010

Fantasies in apparent freefall, though in fact ruthlessly organised and blindingly well executed, were the name of last night's game - an endgame, as it happened, to the BBC Symphony Orchestra's hardest-working Barbican season before the marathon of the Proms.

Comment

LSO, Davis, Uchida, Barbican Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Saturday, 08 May 2010

Communists had taken over the Acropolis, Britain faced a hung parliament and in the 20 minutes it took me to get down to the Barbican by bus the US stock market had fallen more sharply than at any time since 1987. In the face of global and political madness, it was nice to have a concert awaiting that seemed to offer a sense of cosy familiarity and unfashionability and monarchical approval.

Szymanowski Focus, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Wednesday, 05 May 2010

'Poland's most imaginative composer after Chopin': Szymanowski by Witkacy, 1930

Poland's most imaginative composer after Chopin, and his natural heir in the realm of sensual reverie, certainly knew how to yoke a full orchestra to his dreams and fantasies. Yet the work by Szymanowski I've most longed to hear in concert is the three-movement Mythes for violin and piano. A recording of it by Kaja Danczowska and the great Krystian Zimerman quickly acquired cult status in the 1980s. So it seemed like a heaven-sent gift to hear it live in the hands of an even...

Rolando Villazón, Gabrieli Players, Royal Festival Hall

Ismene Brown Monday, 03 May 2010

Since the passing of Luciano Pavarotti, there’s been a gigantic hole for a tenor of gold-plated opera chops and the gift of communication, and Rolando Villazón - young as he is, at only 38 - already appears to have sealed that gap up effortlessly. His stint as judge on the lamentable Popstar to Operastar on ITV recently left everyone tarnished but him.

The Berlin Philharmonic European Concert 2010, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

David Nice Saturday, 01 May 2010

Berlin comes to Oxford: May Day at the Sheldonian with Barenboim and the Berliners

"Madness! Madness! Everywhere madness!" The unsung words of cobbler-philosopher Hans Sachs in the third-act prelude to Wagner's Die Meistersinger might seem like an odd opening manifesto for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's annual May Day ceremonial concert this morning, hosted this year by Oxford in the gorgeous venue where the Berliners had last played under Karajan a very long time ago. But there was method in it. Whether or not Oxford's traditional May Day eve revels last night...