Classical music
graham.rickson
Johann Friedrich Meister: Il giardino del piacere Ensemble Diderot/Johannes Pramsohler (dir. and baroque violin) (Audax Records)Misplaced distrust of fellow Europeans is nothing new; Reinhard Goebel’s enjoyable sleeve note points out that 17th-century German court musicians objected to taking orders from imported French dancing masters. Still, assimilating foreign musical trends “took place silently as part of day-to-day life”, and this engaging set of trio sonatas by one Johann Friedrich Meister reflects the influence of French composers on German secular chamber music.Baroque violinist Read more ...
David Kettle
The big yellow banners proclaiming "Welcome, world" are out. And judging by the seething, heaving crowds, a fair portion of the world has indeed descended on Edinburgh, where the annual August festivals season has now been up and running for just shy of a week.For the Edinburgh International Festival, the city’s big brother event – as opposed to its unruly and far fatter sibling the Fringe – it’s been a very strong start, with a universally adored Bellini Norma starring Cecilia Bartoli (pictured below) kicking things off, and audio-visual son et lumière extravaganza Deep Time illuminating Read more ...
David Nice
Superior light music with a sting, done at the highest level: what could be better for a summer lunchtime in the light and airy Cadogan Hall? Our curator was that most collegial of top soloists, trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. He'd invited colleagues of many nations, all of them first rate, but it was almost a given that chansonnier-composer HK Gruber would steal the show.That's not to undervalue Hardenberger's own unique contributions, kicking off as piccolo trumpeter with Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields strings in the fireworks-strut of fellow Swede Tobias Broström's Sputnik. Jan Lundgren' Read more ...
David Nice
If the BBC were to plan a Proms season exclusively devoted to youth orchestras and ensembles, many of us would be delighted. Standards are now at professional level right across the board. 20 years ago, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (★★★★★) couldn't compare with its Great British counterpart; now, although the age ranges are slightly different and the (or should that be the) National Youth Orchestra (★★★★) has vast wind and brass sections, playing levels appeared equal. It was only the matter of a conductor's questionable interpretation in the first concert and a superlative Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Idyllic setting, star-rated musicians, the sense of an occasion. Verbier so wholly fulfils the clichés of an international music festival that to the cynical it can seem complacent or arrogant in doing so. To the uninitiated – and this was my first visit to the Monaco of the Mountains – there is more than a sprinkling of magic about the sheer implausibility of the place. Perched 1500m up, yet nestling within a circle of Alpine peaks topped by Mont Fort, a town of hardly more than four main streets draws many of the world’s finest performers for three weeks of almost non-stop music-making.The Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Concert halls, as Gregg Wallace might observe if he ever went to one, don’t come much bigger than the Royal Albert Hall, nor violin concertos than the Tchaikovsky. Faced with this awesome combination, the temptation for a soloist is to play up to the occasion. Volume gets louder, vibrato faster, emotions are amped. But not for Pekka Kuusisto. This Finnish violinist has always gone his own way, as likely to be found playing jazz, electronica or folk music as a concerto, and his Tchaikovsky last night was no different.From the long opening melody to the Finale’s boot-stamping dance of a theme, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Butterworth: Orchestral Works BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Kriss Russman, with James Rutherford (baritone) (BIS)George Butterworth died 100 years ago this week. His surviving orchestral music isn’t enough to fill a single disc. But here we get 75 minutes’ worth, the extras and completions all orchestrated by conductor Kriss Russman. The results are unfailingly sympathetic: Russman wisely keeps things light and transparent, making the full-blooded moments more of a surprise. A Shropshire Lad’s “Think no more, lad” is wittily scored, and the string writing in “Is my team ploughing?” is Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Aurora Orchestra’s gimmick at Prom 21 was the same as in the last two seasons: playing a major classical symphony from memory. This was touted as an “astonishing feat” by the concert’s on-stage presenter Tom Service but, although unusual, is it really that extraordinary? When I go to the opera I am not moved to congratulate the singers on performing without music. In fact, the lingering on what should be an incidental feature was in danger of obscuring a more interesting point: the excellence of the orchestra’s actual playing.In terms of difficulty, Mozart’s Symphony No 41 was less of a Read more ...
David Nice
Like Prokofiev in his full-length ballet a century later, Berlioz seems to have been inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to bring forth his most compendious score. John Eliot Gardiner, who knows and loves every bar of light and shade in this great Berlioz kaleidoscope, offered even more of it than usual at last night's Prom.As on his unsurpassable recording with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, where they appear as supplements, we also got the second Prologue for semichorus omitted from the final version, orchestrated by Oliver Knussen, and the extra bars of the Latin Read more ...
David Nice
Where would you go to hear the most electrifying and collegial orchestral playing in the world? It used to be Lucerne while Claudio Abbado was alive. Now that the Lucerne Festival Orchestra has become like any classy superband, the answer is Pärnu in the south of Estonia.It's a modest town of nearly 40,000 inhabitants, but its numbers treble in the summer, with visitors flocking to the eight-mile, south-facing white sand beach and the wooden villas in beautiful parkland (David Oistrakh and Shostakovich travelled westwards to Pärnu for their summer holidays). It also boasts a 900-seater Read more ...
David Nice
Few 87-year-olds would have the stamina to conduct over 100 minutes of Mahler. Bernard Haitink, though, has always kept a steady, unruffled hand on the interpretative tiller, and if his way with the longest of all the symphonies, the Third, hasn't changed that much since his first recording made half a century ago with his Concertgebouw Orchestra, there's still reassurance in the sheer beauty of the music-making. Not the excitement, mania even, you might expect from younger conductors in the outlandish opening movement, but it's quite something to know at the start that the end, in the form Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Keyboard Concertos Andrea Bacchetti/Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (Sony)My only niggle with this invigorating set is that we don’t get all seven of Bach’s keyboard concertos. Having six is splendid, but there’s bags of spare space on the second disc for more music, even if the missing No. 6 is a transcription of one of the Brandenburgs. That said, these are supremely enjoyable performances. Andrea Bacchetti has an ear for the bigger picture. Bach’s elaborate noodlings can sound laborious in some hands, but Bacchetti’s lightness is a thing to treasure. You can always hear the Read more ...