Classical music
graham.rickson
Strauss: Suites from Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings)Manfred Honeck’s extended slice of Richard Strauss's Elektra was made in collaboration with the Czech composer Tomáš Ille, Honeck’s inspiration being performances he’d played in with Claudio Abbado with Vienna State Opera in the 1980s. The results are thoroughly absorbing, the joins seamless. We’re used to thinking of Elektra as one of Strauss’s most extreme works, but here it resembles an extravagantly lush symphonic poem. We get a very convincing taste of the full opera, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Symphony is a word carrying heavy historical baggage. It’s understandable when composers dig for inspiration elsewhere. All the same, Mark-Anthony Turnage has grasped the symphonic nettle with Remembering – In memoriam Evan Scofield which received its first performance last night. Many more will follow, I’d venture.The shock of recognition was not slow in arriving with the opening movement’s construction, bright and angular as steel girders, finding the LSO at their most incisive. There followed an Allegretto-type elegy, then a twisted waltz with trio and repeat. Like Haydn, no less than Read more ...
David Nice
Young Amadeus is growing up in real time with MOZART 250, Classical Opera's ambitious 26-year project following its hero's creative life from childhood to the grave. 2015's start, marking two and a half centuries since the boy wonder's first visit to London, and its sequel had little to show of its main man, but plenty of other, senior composers flourishing in the same years. A full programme of 1767 told us a different story, with a surprise from the 11-year-old that was a kick in the teeth to those of us who thought Mozart was precocious and prodigious but showed no flashes of genius until Read more ...
David Kettle
You can tell it’s a big deal when even a handful of London critics abandon the capital for a Saturday evening in chilly Glasgow. And there were more besides in the capacity crowd for Birtwistle’s opera The Last Supper, given a semi-staged performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – seemingly anyone who’s anyone in Scottish music, from international composers to conductors and orchestra heads, and way beyond too. A big deal it most definitely was – and, miraculously, a free ticket too, since it was essentially a radio recording for a BBC Radio 3 broadcast (scheduled for 28 January) Read more ...
Robert Beale
Colin Matthews’s arrangements for orchestra of the 24 Debussy Préludes (originally commissioned by the Hallé) have been widely admired. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday night began with three of Ravel’s five piano Miroirs, two of them orchestrated by Matthews (one a world premiere) and one by the late Steven Stucky.The Matthews approach to Debussy has been compared in places to Ravel’s own orchestral technique (though a direct claim that he transcribed Debussy as Ravel might have done seems over-egging the pudding somewhat). His Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gavin Higgins: Dark Arteries and other works Tredegar Town Band/Ian Porthouse (Tredegar Town Band)The heavy industries associated with British brass bands may be close to extinction, so it’s reassuring to encounter evidence that so many of them are in rude musical health. Ignore brass bands at your peril; recent years have seen schemes such as El Sistema and Stirling’s Big Noise rightly lauded, but the likes of composer Gavin Higgins point out that brass bands have been performing a similar role for centuries in the UK. Raised in the Forest of Dean, he jokes that he “practically came Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Birmingham audiences are a supportive bunch. There was never much likelihood that they’d greet Andris Nelsons’s first Birmingham appearance since he departed for Boston in 2015 with less than the same warmth that they keep for other former CBSO music directors. Even so, he must have been gratified to walk out to a capacity audience – for a programme of Bruckner and Maxwell Davies – and a 30-second ovation, complete with a couple of cheers, before he’d given so much as a downbeat.Of course, the CBSO has already embarked on a whole new adventure, and with an artist as exciting as Read more ...
David Nice
What's not to like, or love, would have to be the sensible response to both the opening programme of Kings Place's year-long Cello Unwrapped festival at Kings Place and its life-enhancing execution. Symmetries abounded – between Alban Gerhardt's double-stopping summons with the "Canto Primo" of Britten's First Cello Suite at the start and his late-night farewell symphony, Kodály's towering Sonata for solo cello; also between two glistening suites for which the label "neo-Baroque" is too narrow, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Stravinsky's Pulcinella. Nicholas Collon and his Aurora players Read more ...
graham.rickson
Aubade – Music by Fauré and Poulenc Västerås Sinfonietta/Howard Shelley (piano and conductor) (dB Productions)January blues? Those afflicted should self-medicate with this collection instead of nipping down to the nearest off-licence. Nothing cheers me up quite like an invigorating blast of Poulenc’s music. Which isn’t to imply that he’s all breezy insouciance. Skilled Poulencians know how to handle the darker corners. Howard Shelley understands exactly how this music should go, and he’s helped by joyous, alert playing from Sweden’s Västerås Sinfonietta. Poulenc’s sweet-natured Sinfonietta, a Read more ...
Natalie Clein
The cello is so deeply engrained in my fingers, my imagination, it’s part of my being – my life would feel amputated without it. You fall in love with the instrument, the music, and then you embark on the life-long task of trying to get closer to that beguiling musical ideal. That’s the drug, the contract you sign with the devil. Every day I think how lucky I am that I can dive into a score and work at it physically.In Cello Unwrapped, a year-long festival of the instrument at Kings Place which opens on Saturday 7 January with two performances by Alban Gerhardt, I’m performing in three Read more ...
graham.rickson
Glazunov: Violin Concerto, with music by Tchaikovsky, Chausson, Sarasate and Saint-Säens Hideko Udagawa (violin), London Philharmonic Orchestra/Kenneth Klein (Nimbus)Here’s another outing for Glazunov’s charmer of a violin concerto, which should be played in public far more – presumably its 20-minute time-scale counts against it. It’s full of tunes and there isn’t a wasted bar – what’s not to like? Hideko Udagawa’s big-hearted performance is up there with the best, without quite supplanting Nicola Benedetti’s recent Decca version as my first choice. There’s lots to admire in a rapt slow Read more ...
David Nice
Revelations in the classical year never stop coming. Even the week before Christmas yielded two performances as good as you're going to get: the sheer effervescence and light-flourishing of Lucy Crowe in ecstatic Bach and Mozart with La Nuova Musica, and Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Haydn's C major Cello Concerto. So any sifting of 2016's musical riches needs to put the truly one-off packages at the top of the list.In terms of unrepeatable magic and logistics that actually worked, watch the birdie for Pierre-Laurent Aimard's four Aldeburgh Festival concerts of Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux from 4. Read more ...