Classical music
David Nice
First the good news: Cédric Tiberghien, master of tone colour, lucidity and expressive intent, playing the 24 Chopin Preludes plus the Bach C major and the C minor Nocturne in the red-gold dragons' den of the Royal Pavilion's Music Room. Then the not so good: Paul Kildea, ruffler of feathers during his brief Wigmore regency and in his sometimes speculative Britten biography, rushing and mumbling his way through excerpts from his new book, Chopin's Piano: A Journey through Romanticism.Much interesting material there, though even an experienced actor might have had difficulty making it all mesh Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The BBC Young Musician final was a big event in Birmingham. It drew a capacity audience to Symphony Hall, as enthusiastic, engaged and encouraging as any of the competitors could have wished. After the prodigious talent on show in the section finals, it was no surprise that the standards here were sky high. Fortunately, the three finalist were also born entertainers, making for an enjoyable, though excruciatingly hard to call, competition.First up was cellist Maxim Calver (pictured below left), who performed Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations (in the standard revised version). Calver has said Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
After Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s first concert in his weekend Ligeti festival at the Southbank, an innovative programme spanning influential contemporaries and new arrangements, this second was a more canonical affair: the three books of Piano Études presented in recital. Aimard has been performing the earlier Études for over 30 years, and Ligeti named him as his preferred performer, dedicating two movements of the Second Book to him. Authority is to be expected, then, but how does he keep it fresh?The answer is: He continues to take risks, and to take the music to extremes. This is music that Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The mini-festival of György Ligeti’s music this weekend at the Queen Elizabeth Hall kicked off with a concert of chamber music that moved from a monumental first half to a second that was a delightful unbroken sequence of miniatures. Curated by the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, champion of the composer and his friend, this concert showed several sides to Ligeti, but above all focused on his relationship with minimalism.The two halves started with perhaps the two most archetypal minimalist pieces of all, Steve Reich’s Clapping Music and Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique. Reich’s piece is for two Read more ...
stephen.walsh
This is the 50th Vale of Glamorgan Festival, and as its founder and director, John Metcalf, reminded us in a brief post-interval speech, he has been at all of them. Indeed the festival has increasingly mapped itself on to his personal view of what a modern music festival should be: it should, he would argue, contain only music by living composers; and they should only be composers that he, John Metcalf, admires. It sounds like a recipe for the ultimate niche event. But, in fact, it has steadily grown into one of the most impressive, sharply profiled new music festivals anywhere in Europe Read more ...
graham.rickson
Grieg: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Delius: Piano Concerto Mark Bebbington, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Jan Latham-Koenig (Somm)I’m not a big Delius fan – those exquisitely perfumed miniatures don’t quite do it for me, and the tone poems leave me cold. Shouldn't a composer who led such an interesting life have written more striking music? Still, I defy anyone not to be moved by Ken Russell’s haunting BBC dramatisation of Delius’s last years, and pianist Mark Bebbington’s new account of his Piano Concerto has wowed me. In three linked sections and closing with a reprise of the opening Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, debate and spoken word, with visual artist David Shrigley as Guest Director.Enter this competition by entering your details here for a chance to win a fantastic break for two over the closing weekend of Brighton Festival (Fri 25 – Sun 27 May).The prize package includes:A two-night stay at Sooty’s Read more ...
Katie Colombus
This Brighton Festival opener is a perfect fit for day one, coming shortly after the Children's Parade and coasting on the gorgeous, beachy day outside the Brighthelm Centre. I have come from said beach, armed with my own Boy. He's 3. His opinion here is probably more vaild than mine, although he's a little short on the vocabulary.Children are invited to sit at the front of the stage on cushions and blankets, it's a warm and welcoming atmosphere to an inclusive show. Attention is caught by the cast members (Xavier Pathy-Barker, James Aiden Kay, Nick Tigg, Carol Walton and Edward Liddall) Read more ...
David Nice
When you have 21 women to present in song, but only a couple among the 14 poets and none to represent them out of the 15 composers idolising or giving them a voice, you need two strong defenders of their sex at the helm. Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook are no shrinking violets – the soprano no longer a light lyric, the pianist supportive only in the best sense, full of flexible power and forceful middle-to-lower-range sonorities for the voice to coast above.Certainly there were colour and variety enough from both to create worlds in miniature throughout a well-proportioned programme with quite a Read more ...
Christopher Glynn
The idea for a new translation of Schubert's Winterreise came from an old recording. Harry Plunket Greene was nearly 70 (and nearly voiceless) when he entered the studio in 1934 and sang "Der Leiermann," the final song of the cycle, in English (as "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man") into a closely-placed microphone. But the result is unforgettable - a haunting performance of the most mysterious soliloquy in all music, given by an old singer nearing the end of his own road. Like all great performances of Lieder, it relies less on vocal perfection and more on a leap of imagination, inhabiting the world of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No 3, Méhul: Symphony No 1 Solistes Européens Luxembourg/Christoph König (Rubicon)Étienne-Nicolas Méhul was one of revolutionary France’s key musicans. He was commissioned by Napoleon to write his Chant national du 14 juillet 1800, the work serving for a time as an unofficial national anthem. Best remembered as an operatic composer, he also left behind five symphonies. This Symphony in G minor, dating from 1808, is a fascinating discovery. Dripping with angst, it recalls Haydn's stormier symphonies and has a finale with a motif sounding uncannily like Beethoven’s Read more ...
David Nice
Insistence was the name of the LA Phil's first game in its short but ambitious three-day Barbican residency - insistence honed to a perfect sheen and focus, but wearing, for this listener at least, some way in to the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony played in the second half. The essence was a layered, ultimately blistering performance of Varèse's ever startling Amériques sculpted with the energetic rhythmic precision at which Gustavo Dudamel excels, and rich with sensuous perspectives not easy to achieve in this flattening, amplifying hall. That would have been enough to send us home bouncing and Read more ...