Classical music
Rachel Halliburton
The Wild Arts Ensemble was founded by Orlando Jopling in 2022 to create a dynamic, pared-back style of performance in which, as he put it, the “costumes, set and props… can be packed up into a couple of suitcases that we can take with us on the train”.Part of the aim, as with an increasing number of ensembles these days, is to tour in a way that’s more environmentally sustainable, but it’s also resulted in fresh and vivid re-readings of classics that are igniting enthusiasm around the country.This production of the Messiah is currently the jewel in their crown, a supple, energetic Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When does a concert become a ceremony? You generally visit the Barbican for art rather than ritual. Yet, during the Academy of Ancient Music’s performance last night, the bulk of a packed house still stood up for the “Hallelujah” that closes the second part of Handel’s Messiah.This charming, or plain odd, British folk-tradition supposedly derives from George II having done the same in 1743 – although there’s no evidence that the monarch ever rose to the occasion. In any case, it indicates that many of those who rightly love Messiah still treat it as much more than an especially fine Baroque Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Connaught Brass is a quintet of twenty-something players rapidly establishing an enviable reputation, and on the evidence of what I heard yesterday that reputation is fully deserved: they really are superbly good. A well-stuffed Milton Court spoke to their pulling power even in the face of terrible weather, and their easy stage manner and mostly successful repertoire choices made for an enjoyable evening hiding from the elements.Although billed as a Christmas show, there was a minority of seasonal items, even if you stretch a point and include Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé. But there was a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Trio Mediæval: Yule (2L)Pick of my Christmas discs is this sublime collection from Trio Mediæval on the Norwegian audiophile label 2L, reflecting yuletide’s origins in Northern European pagan culture. Imaginative and idiomatic-sounding arrangements, using, variously, kantele, hardanger fiddle, violin, trumpet, organ, bass and percussion invariably suit the material, and the engineering is stunning: sample the organ sound and drum thwacks in ”Lussinati Lange”, or the kantele in “Josefines Julesame” The group have been performing and recording since 1997, and there’s something unearthly Read more ...
David Nice
A time must come again when British orchestras return to complete Tchaikovsky ballet scores in concert, as in the BBC glory days of the great Rozhdestvensky. We were halfway there with The Nutcracker's second act in Mark Wigglesworth’s second programme as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor. The "first act” was in any case a shimmering miracle too, a true partnership with another collegial master, Boris Giltburg, in Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto.Wigglesworth M – not to be confused with Ryan, who may well have improved since I last saw him in action – has by no means Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn Terfel’s still-formidable bass-baritone made the great vault of Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford shrink to a shoebox.With all the vocal charisma of old, and lashings of unashamed theatricality, Terfel (pictured below by Mitch Jenkins) delivered the great despairing lament, “It is enough”, that most obviously acknowledges the debt Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah owes to the Passions of JS Bach. Mendelssohn’s outcast prophet pleads for the Read more ...
Robert Beale
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 seemed likely to come from James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel – his percussion concerto, with the star name of Colin Currie as soloist – and from Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances (especially the third of them) to precede it.Afterwards, it was to be Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony to finish, and that’s been played and heard many times before. In the event, the first two works did sparkle, but the symphony intrigued.The Arnold dances are great fun: Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
There were points when this concert felt like the musical equivalent of watching the atom split – as well as notes there were animal shrieks, sinister rattles, sibilant serpentine sussurations, and primal throaty rumbles. Indian-American composer Shruthi Rajasekar, South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe (pictured below), and the never less than subversive Hermes Experiment unveiled a fascinating laboratory of noise in a lunchtime session that was as exhilarating as it was enjoyably unexpected.The programme opened with Selaocoe, one of the most charismatic and radically experimental Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)Who’d have thought that Igor Levit and Christian Thielemann would be such effective partners? Levitt is one of the most cerebral and thoughtful of pianists with a string of excellent Sony albums, and there’s the worry that any collaborator won’t successfully step up to his level. But this set of Brahms Concertos is excellent, the dialogue between the two musicians transcribed in this set’s booklet suggesting that this was a bromance made in heaven. Concerto No. 1’s Read more ...
David Nice
From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger brought into play, the left hand occasionally visible to me as he raised it at moments of high emotion. The Philharmonia simply burned for him, every phrase and dynamic brought into focus to heighten an already assured vision.Only absolute mastery will do for Mahler's Ninth, his deepest symphony, its first movement alone a monumental test of ebb and Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
When the Venezuelan Rafael Payare was appointed as conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) two years ago, his first action was to blast his way through a French Berlitz course. A graduate of the El Sistema music-teaching project – where he had made his mark in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra as a horn player – one of his key challenges was to master from scratch the language in which this staunchly Francophone orchestra conducts its rehearsals.Watching him conduct however – his tall angular frame sometimes hunched-bird-of-prey like on the podium, sometimes erupting into a nimble Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
For 30 years, La Serenissima have re-mapped the landscape of the Italian Baroque repertoire so that its towering figures, notably Vivaldi, no longer look like isolated peaks but integrated parts of a spectacular range. The ensemble founded by violinist Adrian Chandler delves deep into the archives to recover neglected music not just as a nerdish passion (though there’s nowt wrong with that) but the basis for practical performing editions that restore these lost sounds to life.At the Wigmore Hall, their “Giro d’Italia” series will span the 18th-century peninsula. It began with a seven-course Read more ...