Classical music
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphonies 2 and 7 Wiener Symphoniker/Philippe Jordan (WS/Sony)Philippe Jordan’s cheery face adorns this third volume of Beethoven symphonies from Vienna’s other orchestra, setting the tone fairly well. These are overwhelmingly positive, uplifting performances, superbly played to boot. Nimble speeds, hard timpani sticks and what sound like natural horns and trumpets are a concession to modern (ie. historically informed) practice, but these are at heart big-boned, well-upholstered readings which should improve anyone's mood. How much of an advance Beethoven 2 is over its Read more ...
David Nice
Forget the latest International Tchaikovsky Competition winner (I almost have; only a dim memory of Dmitry Masleev's playing the notes in the obligatory First Piano Concerto, and nothing else, remains from an Istanbul performance). Had Pavel Kolesnikov been competing and given a performance like the one he did last night, there'd have been a riot had he not won. This was all about space, intelligent rethinking, imagination, an apparent ease and surface calm in the most daunting passages: a very hard act to follow, and the resurrection of Ethel Smyth's D major Mass after the interval wasn't Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Jerusalem! This fact-studded story of 20th century British music told us that the nation's unofficial national anthem, Hubert Parry’s setting of William Blake’s poem, originated in 1916 as a commission from the “Fight for Right” movement. Officials wanted a grand piece of music to boost morale (following the law of unintended consequences, Parry saw to it that Jerusalem became a rallying song for the suffragettes, too). The work of Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams was also enlisted to boost the national spirit. Even bureaucracy recognised the potential of music to uplift, encourage, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Even in a large hall, very good things can come in small packages. In advance, partisans of the Wigmore Hall or some other dedicated chamber space might have feared that the Barbican’s main auditorium would turn out to be too chilly a barn for the intimate music-making promised by this supergroup. All-star trios or quartets, made up of soloists more accustomed to the undivided limelight, can frequently add up to less than the sum of their parts. And for those of us whose touchstone of trio genius remains the incomparable Beaux Arts – above all in its Pressler-Cohen-Greenhouse line-up – it’s Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Missa in Angustiis. Mass in troubled times. There was a logic in programming Haydn’s D minor Mass on the Armistice Centenary day. The final words of the mass, dona nobis pacem, would be the right ones to end this day of reflection. And to juxtapose the Haydn with another, rarely-performed choral work from a later time of instability, Bartók’s Cantata Profana from 1930, which also happens to have its tonal centre in the key of D, was a fascinating idea, on paper at least. There were all kinds of compensations and revelations in this concert, but it was not without its problems or Read more ...
graham.rickson
A Walk with Ivor Gurney Tenebrae, Aurora Orchestra, Sarah Connolly, Simon Callow, Nigel Short (conductor) (Signum Classics)Ivor Gurney was a genuine polymath, a talented composer and poet whose career was disrupted by serving with the Gloucestershire Regiment in World War I. He continued to write verse and music while posted to the front, picking up a serious shoulder injury along the way and later becoming the victim of a gas attack (an experience he stoically described as “no worse than catarrh or a bad cold”). This double album presents four Gurney works alongside pieces by composers Read more ...
David Nice
How many times have you heard live in concert a concerto for string quartet and instrumental ensemble? In my case, three, all of the occasions performances of John Adams's Beethoven-based giant scherzo Absolute Jest. Two more got added to the list last night in Vladimir Jurowski's typically rich and rare compendium which ticked quite a few boxes: as a showcase for strings, wind and brass respectively; as centenary homage to an independent Czechoslavakia; and (though this was not acknowledged in the programme) as a reminder that it was 80 years ago this coming December that the first Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
National feeling – in music, as anywhere else – depends on choice, not blood. This BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican to mark the centenary of Poland’s rebirth as a nation never felt remotely like a feast of aural jingoism. In fact, its most explicit and whole-hearted invocation of Polish tunes and styles came not from a native son but from (who else?) Edward Elgar. He wrote his little-played Polonia in 1915 to aid relief efforts for refugees after the Great War had (yet again) sent German and Russian boots crashing bloodily over Polish soil.Amid its suitably stirring nods to Read more ...
Calidore String Quartet
Classical musicians spend much of their lives inhabiting the realms of the past. To effectively practise and perform the music of Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and countless others, performers must combine research and personal intuition to time travel into the era of these great composers’ lives. After months of exploration, as one begins to comprehend the social customs, politics and science of the era, a clearer understanding of the composer's individual personality and musical aesthetic begin to emerge.Many performers spend their entire life unravelling issues such as how Beethoven’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Josquin: Missa Gaudeamus, Missa L’ami Baudichon The Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips (Gimell)That music composed in the 14th and 15th centuries can be enjoyed and performed today is mind-boggling. As is looking at one of Josquin des Préz’s manuscripts, close enough to conventional modern notation for even a hick like me to get an inkling of what the music might sound like. This latest Tallis Scholars release features two contrasting Masses, the mature Missa Gaudemas’s intensity set against the earlier, breezier Missa L’ami Baudichon. Peter Phillips has his three tenors sing the plainchant Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The Italian pianist Federico Colli, 30, best known so far as winner of the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition, last night arrived for his Wigmore Hall debut sporting an emerald-green cravat, but the sonic colours he magicked out of the piano quickly put its gleam in the shade. He is an artist developing at an impressive rate, and one of whom I think we’ll be hearing a great deal more in years ahead.Colli had nevertheless picked a somewhat unforgiving programme – a first half entirely of Scarlatti and a second of chewingly unremitting D minor – and if at times the result was more Read more ...
Joe Turnbull
Classical music struggles to shrug off the perception of being something of a rarefied world. Or “hermetically sealed” as Charles Hazlewood, founder of the British Paraorchestra describes it. “Classical music has to break out from its ivory tower," says Hazlewood. That tower is exponentially harder to scale for disabled musicians looking to fight their way up, with all the extra logistical and attitudinal barriers they must contend with.“There’s data on disability in housing, employment, in almost every government department,” says Siggy Patchitt, Head of Bristol Music Trust's National Centre Read more ...