Classical Reviews
Mahler’s Third Symphony, Philharmonia, Paavo Järvi, RFH review - phosphorescent glow, depths only glimpsedFriday, 17 March 2023
This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not interested in Mahler. Two of the orchestra’s most distinguished visitors, Jakub Hrůša and Paavo Järvi, certainly are, so after Hrůša’s blazing Second, hopes were high for Järvi’s Third. Read more... |
Bernstein's Mass, RNCM, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a happening, a demo, an achievementTuesday, 14 March 2023
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass has something of the nature of what might have been called a “happening” at the time he wrote it. It was 1971, and it was created for and premiered at the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Read more... |
Nonclassical: The Greenhouse Effect, Barbican Conservatory review - enjoyable freestyle happeningMonday, 13 March 2023
It would seem unfitting to report on Nonclassical’s event – happening? – in the Barbican Conservatory on Sunday with anything resembling a conventional review. So instead I shall treat this free-form “experience” to a non-sequential response, in the form of 19 observations: things I saw, heard or noticed. Read more... |
St Mary’s Music School, RSNO, New, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - a cornucopia of delightsWednesday, 08 March 2023
This evening brought to mind those marathon 19th century concerts when Beethoven would unleash a handful of new symphonies and a couple of piano concertos on an unsuspecting public. Read more... |
Gerstein, Bintner, Waarts, Wigmore Hall review - fascinating connections, uneven musicTuesday, 07 March 2023
Stefan Zweig once wrote that the difference between Busoni and every other pianist he had ever heard was the way the influential Tuscan-born Germanophile performer, composer and intellectual would always appear to be listening so intently to his own playing, “his uplifted face full of blissful rapture, which turns to stone in sweet awe at the Medusa-like beauty of the music.” Read more... |
Pritchin, Emelyanychev, SCO Soloists, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - chamber music at its most thrillingTuesday, 28 February 2023
After full orchestral performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto and First Symphony, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra shone a more intimate light on the composer’s oeuvre with a recital of chamber works in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall on Sunday. Read more... |
LPO, Adès, RFH review - tempests and infernosThursday, 23 February 2023
I was really looking forward to hearing music from Thomas Adès’s ballet The Dante Project again, after being so excited by it at the Royal Ballet last year. By contrast, I was seriously disappointed by his opera of The Tempest in 2003, and hoped to like it better in a new symphonic version. Read more... |
Benjamin, Jaya-Ratnam, Harper, Milton Court review - black musicians take centre stageWednesday, 22 February 2023
This recital was a welcome opportunity to hear songs by a panoply of black composers – many of them women – ranging from Amanda Aldridge (1866-1956) to Ella Jarman-Pinto (b.1989), performed with extrovert glee by Nadine Benjamin, accompanied by Caroline Jaya-Ratnam, with readings by Michael Harper. Read more... |
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wigmore Hall review - virtuoso brilliance and thoughtfulness reveal Haydn's rangeTuesday, 21 February 2023
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet mischievously described interpreting Haydn’s piano sonatas as “putting clothes on a rather naked skeleton… You have this joy of bringing it to life with all the tools you can imagine.” Read more... |
Jerusalem Quartet, Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - freedom and rigour in perfect balanceFriday, 17 February 2023
It’s not often that the most bittersweet moment in a rich concert comes in the encore. Elisabeth Leonskaja had already played the generous extra in question, the Dumka movement of Dvořák’s A major Piano Quintet, with the Staatskapelle Quartet only a fortnight earlier. Here, fine-tuned with the Jerusalems, that moment when the joyfully flowing episode turns dark and the piano seems to call from a dark wood proved sheer magic. Read more... |
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