Classical music
Boyd Tonkin
Weirdly enough, it was “Tea for Two” that definitively proved her class for me. As a second encore to Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, after a mesmeric transcription of that composer’s Vocalise, Yuja Wang’s goodbye treat channelled the mighty Art Tatum with a scrupulous respect for the jazz master’s timing and phrasing. Sometimes, the Beijing-born megastar still finds herself the target of critical opprobrium on the grounds that serious musicianship really doesn’t mix with such a glittery and flamboyant stage personality. Well, tell that to the Abbé Liszt – or to Rach himself, for that Read more ...
David Nice
His movements are minimal (perhaps they always were). A more intense flick of the baton, a sudden wider sweep of the expressive left hand, can help quicken a tempo, draw extra firepower from the players, but Bernard Haitink's conducting is still the most unforced and, well, musicianly, in the world. His decision to retire from official concert-giving - a "sabbatical", his biography says - after the season in which he celebrated his 90th birthday with two LSO concerts in March means we'll miss him terribly. But it was a timely gesture, like everything he's ever done. This Prom will not be Read more ...
David Nice
When you've found some of the best young musicians in the world, and they've found that they love working in the peaceful surroundings of a magical spot in North Norfolk, you don't let go. Tenor Ben Johnson and pianist Tom Primrose focused for a special-birthday Southrepps Music Festival on long-term visitors including BBC Young Musician of the Year 2014 Martin James Bartlett, award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe and violinist Benjamin Baker alongside a stunning newcomer and Bartlett's equal among more-than-promising pianists, Hungarian-born Daniel Lebhardt. With Britten's The Burning Fiery Read more ...
David Nice
Human sacrifice has a disconcerting and wonderful effect upon great composers, above all when it involves the supremely queasy issue of a father vowing to offer up his child: think of Britten with Abraham and Isaac, Mozart with Idomeneo and Idamante, Gluck with Agamemnon and Iphigenia, and here Handel with Jephtha and Iphis in his last oratorio. How the nominally devout composer responded to this Old Testament horror is at its most astonishing in the choral response at the end of the Second Act, and that certainly hit us hard in last night's Prom.Changing lines from Pope ending "what God Read more ...
graham.rickson
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concertos 3, 4 & 5 Alexandre Kantorow (piano), Tapiola Sinfonietta/Jean-Jacques Kantorow (BIS)Saint-Saëns’ five piano concertos are a pleasure no one need feel guilty about indulging in. My current go-to cycle is a scratchy 1950s French set from Jean-Marie Darre, full of fizz and colour. Does Alexandre Kantorow measure up? Definitely: this generously filled CD is electrifying. Why not begin with Concerto No 5, a late work written when the composer's star was in the descendant, upstarts like Debussy and Ravel about to steal Saint-Saëns’ thunder. Subtitled “L’ Read more ...
David Nice
Let's be clear: this was a Prom of world-class works by English composers, not a conservative concert of English music. Politically speaking, Elgar was one of the few on the right, but how different inwardly, speaking through the poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy and singing with his own reminiscences in The Music Makers of timeless art that outlives the fall of empires and individual fates. How moving it was, then, to welcome back Dame Sarah Connolly after her very public statement about her recent operation for breast cancer. The most passionate of Remainers, she might have worn a more pronounced Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Manchester International Piano Competition produced three outstanding performances over the two evenings of its finals: the winner of the first prize was Ilia Lomtatidze, from Georgia, with second prize awarded jointly to the Italian and French pianists Luca Grianti and Oscar Colliar.This was the sixth event of its kind, its full name the Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists. Note the words "Concerto" and "Young" there: it’s not just another piano solo tournament. The maximum age for entrants is 22, and they all have to be capable of playing a concerto – which Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
After Thursday night’s concert I celebrated the Proms’ exploration of unfamiliar repertoire via the CBSO. The following evening saw the festival diving back into mainstream repertoire – as it must also do – conducted by the CBSO’s previous music director. But although Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony is now central to the canon, it wasn’t always so: Henry Wood only ever programmed Bruckner once during his entire reign at the Proms, writing later in his autobiography “the public would not have it then; neither will they now.” Fast-forward 80 years and the public very much will have it, as evidenced Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Keyboard Music Nils Anders Mortensen (piano) (Lawo Classics)There's so much to love about this Bach keyboard disc: namely attractive artwork, glowing sound and an intelligent programme clearly chosen by the artist. And there's the pianist himself, Nils Anders Mortensen, who I'd only previously registered as a skilled, sensitive accompanist. It's rare to find an artist with such a peripheral presence on social media. Mortensen doesn’t have a website, and the sole photo in Lawo’s booklet shows an appealingly dishevelled figure distantly clambering over some rocks. Mortensen’s Bach Read more ...
David Nice
Puccini's and Abbé Prévost's glitter-seduced Manon Lescaut might have been inclined to linger longer in the salon of dirty old man Geronte if he'd served her up not his own madrigals but Bach's music for various harpsichords and ensemble. Five such concertos gave us a morning of pure pleasure in the light-filled, packed-to-the-rafters surroundings of the wonderful Queen's Hall (★★★★), a sober though appreciative audience sitting and standing around the artists in the converted church like a Lutheran congregation, yet were all but eclipsed by the seductive force of Puccini's first great love Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Let us never tire of singing the praises of the Proms, nor ever take them for granted. For two months concerts, many of which would be the highlight of any ‘normal’ week, keep coming night after night. And for all that it is a critic’s job to comment in detail and find fault where necessary, it is also helpful sometimes to step back and say: the Proms is an astonishing festival which we should be grateful to have. The thought is prompted by last night’s concert, which saw the Proms at its best: a neglected favourite of previous generations, a popular concerto played by a rising young star, a Read more ...
David Nice
So the Proms ignored the Berlioz anniversary challenge to perform his Requiem and serve up four brass bands at the points of the Albert Hall compass. Yet at least last night in works of the 1920s and 1930s we got one offstage in the crazed baggy-monster original version of Varèse's Amériques and two in blazing antiphons on the platform, fanfaring both luxury and the celebrants of its overthrow in Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. With Simon Rattle in command of vast forces, it was mostly loud and brilliant, but it could have been even more focused in its ferocity.With two London orchestras showing Read more ...