Classical Reviews
Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber, Wigmore Hall review - muted regret and distant longingWednesday, 30 November 2022
There is no mistaking Christian Gerhaher. His voice is a light, agile baritone, and it is utterly distinctive. He is a very verbal singer, and is as happy delivering his lines in a toneless parlando as he is full voice. But when he does increase the colour, a burnished, slightly nasal tone appears, rich but still light. Emotions are always controlled, and the passion will often build gradually but steadily. Read more... |
BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC NOW, Jeannin, BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff review - competent music-making, interesting choicesWednesday, 30 November 2022
There are conductors, and then again there are choral conductors. I sang under David Willcocks in Tallis’s 40-part "Spem in alium" and remember vividly that long-armed semaphoring that he later applied so notably with the Bach Choir. Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Harry Baker, Noisenight 13, Jazz Cafe review - distinctive and easygoing chemistryTuesday, 29 November 2022
The elation in the queue was palpable as people stood laughing and chatting in the November cold waiting for the doors of the Jazz Café to open for the latest crowd-funded event organised by Through the Noise. This 13th Noisenight – which brings major classical soloists to nightclubs – was a chance to see Sheku Kanneh-Mason and pianist Harry Baker at a key moment in Through the Noise’s history, the start of its first national tour. Read more... |
A Child of Our Time, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - the spirit still movesMonday, 28 November 2022
Half a century ago, Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time felt inescapable. For a youth-choir singer in the London of that period, his wartime “modern oratorio” supplied a reference-point of ambition and achievement to which our exasperated elders always seemed eager to refer – and to defer. Read more... |
Basel Saleh, Sansara, United Strings of Europe, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - music of sanctuary and solidaritySaturday, 26 November 2022
This collaboration between two young and exciting ensembles, the choir Sansara and the United Strings of Europe, had its heart in a good place. Read more... |
Hewitt, Hallé, Schuldt, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - lightening the gloomFriday, 25 November 2022
If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality. Read more... |
Kristian Bezuidenhout, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Wigmore Hall review - fires of LondonWednesday, 23 November 2022
A dream pairing of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and early-keyboard wizard Kristian Bezuidenhout marked St Cecilia’s Day at the Wigmore Hall with a programme that celebrated music made not in the Black Forest but beside the Thames. Read more... |
Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - brooding richness and fiery fervourTuesday, 22 November 2022
Leif Ove Andsnes has a distinctive voice at the piano; clear, controlled and powerful. He sits upright; his body barely moves, and his head sways gently to the melodies. But he never loses himself in the music, he is always in control. Read more... |
Roderick Williams, Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - sunshine and serenityMonday, 21 November 2022
The Nash Ensemble’s concerts dedicated to “Beethoven and the Romantics” not only trace the flowering of the Romantic spirit in music from the Vienna of the 1800s through a continent and across the century. They also give a place at the top table for works by once-sidelined helpmeets of the movement’s giants: Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler. Read more... |
Mahler 9, BBC NOW, Stenz, St David's Hall, Cardiff review - passionate without bloodshed on the rostrumSaturday, 19 November 2022
What a fascinating work Mahler's Ninth Symphony is! Marvellous and astonishing as well, of course. But these qualities are, so to speak, written into the score (did Mahler ever compose anything not designed to astonish?). Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Bach Mendelssohn Festival, Part I, Oxford Philharmonic Orche...
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn...
Album: White Denim - 12
White Denim’s literally titled 12th album opens with the fidgety “Light on.” Drawing a line between electronica and Tropicália, it exudes...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 87: Roots Manuva, Bogdan Raczynski, Son...
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
...
Currie, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - s...
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle in the programme...
Blu-ray: Juggernaut
That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the...
Rigoletto, Irish National Opera / Murrihy, Collins, NCH Dubl...
How many Rigolettos have regular operagoers among you sat through where there wasn’t some major defect, in either the production or the...
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Ta...
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial...
Album: Panelia - Nothing and All At Once
Nothing and All at Once is the debut album from New Delhi...
Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Par...
The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All...