Classical music
David Nice
Schumann revitalized by John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony Orchestra last year left us wanting more: namely two of the four symphonies (transcendently great, as it turns out from these revelatory performances). But those concerts also guaranteed that the ones a year later would be the most vital tonic imaginable for grey, damp early February. And so it proved with the joybursts of the Third (“Rhenish”) and, finally, the First (“Spring”): if anything could send you dancing away, the latter's lightly tripping vernal finale and the encore played on both evenings, the even more airborne Read more ...
Robert Beale
Berlioz called it a "concert opera". His telling of the Faust story is in scenes and highly theatrical, but a bit of a challenge to put on in the theatre, with its marching armies, floating sylphs, dancing will-o’-the-wisps and galloping horses. It seems he expected it to be a kind of giant cantata, and that’s the way the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder perform it. But it’s still operatic in concept, and that very theatricality demands much of its chorus as well as its soloists – the assembled choir has to represent "peasants, penitents, drinkers, gnomes, sylphs, soldiers, students, will-o’-the- Read more ...
David Nice
There's now something of a gala atmosphere when the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House takes to the Covent Garden stage with its music director Antonio Pappano. Admittedly some of the players are not the same as when he took up his tenure, but the core relationship of 17 years - with the contract now extended to at least the end of the 2022/23 season - results in collegial music-making at an intense level which most orchestras can only dream about. As in 2016, he chose an all-Russian programme - none of it core repertoire, all of it spellbinding in one way or another.Blink and you miss the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Et la lune descend – piano music by Claude Debussy Olga Stezhko (Palermo Classica)Olga Stezhko writes in her extended sleeve note of wanting “to look beyond the multifaceted beauty of Debussy’s piano pieces and bring out the edge and ambiguity…” There's the danger that this repertoire can be treated as sophisticated chillout music, with production values to match. One thing I really like about this anthology is the recorded sound. Close and on the dry side, it lets us hear everything; this Debussy looks forward far more than back. Try Stezhko’s thrilling account of the little “Mouvement Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When a pianist directs from the keyboard, the result can be a sedate affair: a matter of minimalist time-keeping while the soloist shows his or her fancy moves. Not so with Dame Mitsuko Uchida and her long-term partners, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Clad in a sort of blue magician’s gown over severe black, Uchida – who has just turned 70 – stood to conduct, vigorously, the opening passages of last night’s two Mozart concertos at the Royal Festival Hall. Even when safely back on her stool, she frequently indicated every sign of wanting to leave it as her arms – when not otherwise occupied – Read more ...
David Nice
Pianists most often cite Radu Lupu alongside Martha Argerich and Grigory Sokolov as the greatest. So it was hardly surprising to see so many top musicians in a packed audience, buzzing with expectation for the 73-year-old Romanian's most recent UK appearance with a conductor he respects, Paavo Järvi. Lupu appeared at Steven Isserlis's 60th birthday event at the Wigmore towards the end of last year, but before that hasn't been seen here since 2014. I heard him then, but in Stockholm, giving a magisterial performance of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. Last night's Fourth was exquisite at Read more ...
David Nice
Practitioners of musical authenticity and scholarly research, so guarded and protective of their territory in the early days, now like to spread the love around. So if an amateur choir of 100-plus like the BBC Symphony Chorus, celebrating its 90th anniversary, and selected members of a symphony orchestra want to tackle Bach's B minor Mass – as anyone in their right minds would wish to, since it's a monumental masterpiece – then they could hardly do better than entice the dynamic John Butt away from the small forces of his Dunedin Consort for a one-off spectacular.Or could they? As Butt beat Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In the fourth performance of their UK tour, with Vassily Sinaisky replacing an indisposed Yuri Temirkanov, the St Petersburg Philharmonic gave a warm and rousing performance at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Prokofiev’s First Symphony – written in "classical" style as a homage to Haydn – saw the orchestra start off with a deep and meaty tone, which gave a welcome depth to some of Prokofiev’s music, though it proved a bit bulky for many of the symphony’s light touches.The orchestra’s interpretation of the work was certainly more rooted in the romantic era than the classical. Sinaisky’s conducting Read more ...
graham.rickson
Adventures In Sound (él records)Dipping in and out of this highly desirable box set recalls 1950s sci-fi visions of the future, looking forward to a time when we'd all be driving flying cars and living under a benevolent one-world government. Alas, this is 2019 and things aren't quite so rosy. There's some seriously strange music here, undoubtedly forward-looking but very much of its time. Begin with Pierre Shaeffer, a French radio engineer who began playing with turntables to manipulate and distort sounds as early as 1948. His Cinq études de bruit was a groundbreaking example of Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Well, I didn’t expect that – and judging from the way the rest of the audience reacted, nor did anyone else. After Cristian Măcelaru slammed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra full speed into the final chord of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, there was a stunned silence, broken by gasps. And then cheers, as a smiling, visibly drained Măcelaru gestured back at the orchestra with both thumbs up. True, this is a symphony with a fearsome reputation: a rarity even today, when the idea that Vaughan Williams is anything other than a major 20th century modernist looks as parochial as his Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
There is no doubting Diana Damrau’s star power. She is not a demonstrative performer, and her voice is small, but the sheer character of her tone, and the passion she invests, make every line special. She is not one to over-sentimentalise either, so there was never any danger of Strauss’s Four Last Songs turning saccharine here. Conductor Mariss Jansons was on her wavelength, and brought richly coloured but always carefully controlled support from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.All of the Strauss on this programme – the Four Last Songs and Ein Heldenleben – was given in broad and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Couperin: Les Nations Réunies & autres sonades La Simphonie du Marais/Hugo Reyne (Musiques à la Chabotterie)François Couperin was one of the baroque era’s greatest keyboard composers. Did he write any orchestral music? Er, no. Though listen to a few minutes of Hugo Reyne’s version of his trio sonata “La Pucelle” and you'll be wondering where this music has been all your life. La Simphonie du Marais’s director and flautist, Reyne gives us a discursive but entertaining booklet essay in the form of an imaginary interview with Couperin. Near the end he tells the composer that “we made a Read more ...