Classical music
graham.rickson
Antheil: Symphonies 4 and 5, Over the Plains BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)American composer George Antheil boastfully described himself as the early 20th century’s "bad boy of music", though a few hours sent in the company of this disc might lead you to wonder quite what all the fuss was about. Perhaps Antheil just had the knack of being in the right place at the right time: his Ballet mécanique, featuring multiple keyboards and an aeroplane propellor, caused a short-lived scandal in Paris in 1926. Antheil returned to the US in the early 1930s, settling in Hollywood in 1936 Read more ...
David Nice
Tears were likely to flow freely on this most beautiful and terrible of June evenings, especially given a programme – dedicated by Vladimir Ashkenazy to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire – already prone to the elegiac. It could hardly be otherwise with the music of Elgar and Sibelius, two Europeans with a penchant for introspection whose works Ashkenazy knows well. What ended up nearly breaking us, though, was an encore – none I've heard has ever been more astonishing – by that ever unpredictable violinist Pekka Kuusisto.He told us he'd planned to play a "jolly Read more ...
David Nice
The time is out of joint for Turkey at the moment, but it’s still a country equally split between those looking to the west for the culture of ideas and the more conservative element which at least needs its voice respected. They co-exist peacefully in a great cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, which recently joined Ankara and Izmir in rejecting increased powers for its leader. Facing difficult challenges and late cancellations, the vivacious Yeşim Gurer, director of the 45th Istanbul Music Festival, held a fine balance between the urban intelligentsia's hunger for fine western ensembles and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach, Bartók, Boulez Michael Barenboim (violin) (Accentus)Michael Barenboim’s disc consists solely of pieces by composers whose names begin with B, but it’s effectively an A-Z of solo violin technique, as well as a demonstration of his winning versatility. Bach’s C major Sonata’s narrative is plotted with unerring skill, the hypnotic slow opening slowly growing in intensity before Barenboim lets off steam with an immaculate fugue. Similarly, the Largo prepares us for a bubbly, unbuttoned finale, Barenboim’s dynamic control masterly. It's not a huge jump from here to Bartók’s epic Sonata for Read more ...
theartsdesk
The first of Jiří Bělohlávek’s final three appearances in London, conducting his Czech Philharmonic in a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa, came as a shock. The trademark grey curly hair had vanished. Clearly he had undergone chemotherapy, but we all presumed – since no-one pries in these instances – that what had to be cancer was in remission. By the time of his Dvořák Requiem at the Barbican in April, the assumption was that he would carry on for an indefinite period of time. So his death at the untimely age of 71 last Wednesday came as a surprise even to those who knew him better Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia here reached the most revolutionary works in their twin portrait season of Gerald Barry and Beethoven: Barry’s Chevaux-de-frise and Beethoven’s "Eroica". Adès, ever-keen to play the iconoclast, emphasised all the radical features and brought a visceral intensity to both scores. The Barry came off best, the performance yet again demonstrating the close artistic affinity between the two composers. The Beethoven was less successful – suitably dynamic but with its lyrical lines rarely given space to breath under the weight of Adès’ muscular interventions. Read more ...
Robert Beale
It may not have had the symbolism of the Ariana Grande concert just down the road, but in its own way the joint Hallé/BBC Philharmonic performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder said as much about Manchester as the rock jamboree did. It was originally meant to be a birthday party for Sir Mark Elder, 70 just two days before, and there was something of a celebration still, though with bag searches on the way into the Bridgewater Hall (pictured below) and awareness of all that had happened the feeling was naturally muted.Sir Thomas Allen’s brief speech before the performance summed up a sense of Read more ...
David Nice
"Generally speaking," writes Evgeny Kissin in one of the many generous tributes to those whose artistry he most admires, "the mastery of [Carlo Maria] Giulini is exactly what is dearest of all to me in art: simplicity, depth and spirituality". The same is true of the personality revealed in this slim but by no means undernourishing volume from one of our time's most fascinating pianists.The reflections on music and literature in the second half are more revelatory than the memoir of his precociously gifted childhood and youth, where Kissin's refusal to be hard on anyone or waspish gives a Read more ...
David Nice
"Love is in the air," croons or rather bellows presenter Juri Tetzlaff, getting his audience of adults and children to bellow back the wordless refrain, arms swaying above their heads. Mezzo Sophie Rennert, dragged up as noble Lotario, and soprano Marie Lys as widowed princess Adelaide dance tenderly to the strains. They're not singing one of the most ravishing love duets in opera this morning because this is the one-hour family version of Handel's Lotario. And a better advertisement to the parents for the whole thing I can't imagine. The show proper is the best I've seen out of four of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brian Elias: Electra Mourns Psappha/Nicholas Kok, Britten Sinfonia/Clark Rundell (NMC)Bombay-born British composer Brian Elias has been active since the 1960s. A slow and fastidious worker, his 1992 score for the Royal Ballet’s The Judas Tree is probably the closest thing he's had to a hit. Frustratingly, it's not been recorded, but NMC have released several discs of his music. Electra Mourns is the latest. The title work was written in 2011; Elias sets an untranslated chunk of Sophocles’s play sung by mezzo Susan Bickley, duetting with Nicholas Daniel’s obbligato cor anglais and accompanied Read more ...
Richard Bratby
The CBSO is justifiably proud of its association with Benjamin Britten. There’s rather less proof that he reciprocated, dismissing the orchestra as "second-rate" after it premiered his War Requiem in 1962. Throughout the 1950s, he’d repeatedly promised to write an orchestral work for Birmingham, only to renege on the deal after the orchestra’s then chief conductor Rudolf Schwarz moved on to the BBC in 1957. What the CBSO did get from Britten, in September 1954, was the world premiere of an unwieldy Symphonic Suite from what's generally agreed to be one of his patchier operas, the 1953 Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
How to change the way we hear Chopin and Beethoven: play Bach first. Richard Goode opened his Royal Festival Hall recital with the Partita No.6 in E minor, perhaps the most enigmatic and challenging of its siblings. Its intricate contrapuntal lines and harsh, crunching harmonies cast a long shaft of light over the rest of the programme. Without Bach, it seemed to suggest, neither of the other two composers would have written as they did.With Goode, a recital is all about the music (that might sound like stating the obvious, but one can’t guarantee it with every pianist these days). The Read more ...