Classical music
David Nice
Elgar declared a “massive hope in the future” as the human programme behind his epic First Symphony’s final exultant sprint. That hope was sprinkled like gold dust around the featured artists of this all-English concert. There are good reasons to be optimistic about the effective, colourful scores of 32-year-old Anna Clyne; we know that Benjamin Grosvenor, her junior by 12 years, is already a pianist of mercurial assurance, a real front-runner. And the BBCSO stole a march on the other London orchestras in 2013 with abundant fighting spirit, rising to the special focus demanded of them by a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók, Eötvös, Ligeti – Violin Concertos Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern/Peter Eötvös (Naïve)An embarrassment of riches here - it’s hard to know where to start. The opening of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No 2, soft harp arpeggios underneath a pungent, folk-tinged melody, is gorgeous. With luck it will ensnare the open-minded casual listener before the accessibility becomes fused with this composer’s more cerebral mature style. It’s fabulous, spicy stuff – gritty in places but never losing its ability to sing. Only Bartók could make the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The carillon is the world’s heaviest musical instrument. It consists of a collection of bells, usually played via a keyboard. There’s one in Oslo’s town hall, many tons of bronze whose sound reverberates daily across the Norwegian capital. Hendrik Weber – AKA Pantha du Prince - is a German techno DJ-producer. He’s at the arty, modern-classical end of the spectrum, as interested in Steve Reich as Carl Craig. Hearing Oslo’s carillon he was inspired to make it the centrepiece of his fourth album. Such an idea could have bred a chin-stroking journey into noodling ambience but Weber instead nails Read more ...
graham.rickson
Holst? Yes. Britten? Maybe. But John Adams? Programming Adams’ Guide to Strange Places as the extended opener in this National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain concert made complete sense after a few minutes; conductor John Wilson’s strengths as an interpreter of Hollywood film scores and British light music made him ideally suited to unpick the thornier metrical complexities of the Adams work. Wilson’s beat is disarmingly precise, every gear change spelt out with refreshing precision. Which, when he’s dealing with 165 musicians who look as fresh-faced as he does, can only be a good thing. Read more ...
David Nice
Faced with yet another world premiere from his friends in the Borodin Quartet, Shostakovich severely asked them whether they’d yet played all of Haydn’s quartets (they hadn’t). As a listener, I feel the same about Bach’s cantatas. Whether or not a lifetime will be enough to catch each of these varied and ever surprising little miracles in the flesh, Kings Place’s Bach Unwrapped series includes a chance to hear nearly 30 of the 200 from seven different ensembles in less than a year. Unfortunately it looks as if I drew the short straw at the end of the first four concerts.There was only one Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Mayan calendar recently suggested it was all over. It is now, almost. 2012 was, by anyone’s lights, an annus mirabilis for culture on these shores. The world came to the United Kingdom, and the kingdom was indeed more or less united by a genuine aura of inclusion. Clumps of funding were hurled in the general direction of the Cultural Olympiad, which became known as the London 2012 Festival, and all sorts leapt aboard. Just for a start, those opera companies who had been burning to perform a version of Vivaldi's L'Olimpiade could now finally proceed. At least three did.Not all of what Read more ...
edward.seckerson
From his precocious early years at the cutting edge of the musical avant garde to those many and memorable nights where just the man and the piano and that engaging gravelly voice of his would wrap around an American songbook standard or a 32-something he’d made earlier, Richard Rodney Bennett really did, in the words of his publisher, do “everything in-between” when it came to the art he knew and loved from the inside out.I had one “official” interview with him many years ago and it took place in the home of our mutual friend, composer and lyricist Charles Hart, which I think helped to put Read more ...
David Nice
Messiahs of all kinds multiply at this time of year: the meek and the threadbare as well as the proud and polished. On the Sunday before Christmas, it was hard to choose between two potential archangels who could hardly fail given their respective pedigrees. It may have initially come down to a choice between single star soloists, soprano of the year Sophie Bevan at the Wigmore or flawless countertenor Iestyn Davies (pictured below by Marco Borggreve) at St John’s. As it turned out the entire team at Smith Square, crowning a week of top-quality choral concerts which had included Bach's Read more ...
graham.rickson
Advent at Merton Choir of Merton College, Oxford/Peter Phillips and Benjamin Nicholas (Delphian)Delphian’s Christmas CD, recorded in the glowing acoustic of Merton College Chapel, is a satisfyingly solemn, serious affair. Here, the Advent progression from hushed anticipation to bright, hopeful light is given extra weight by the varied choice of material sung – notably a sequence of seven newly commissioned antiphons from contemporary composers. Howard Skempton’s tiny O Sapienta closes abruptly just as you’re beginning to bask in its warm glow, followed by a pleasingly angular O Adonai Read more ...
Roderic Dunnett
Valery Gergiev’s exploration of the music of Karol Szymanowski is one of the most vitalising series mounted at the Barbican in recent years - to compare, say, with Sir Colin Davis’s Sibelius and Berlioz, Michael Tilson Thomas’s tributes to Leonard Bernstein, or Gergiev’s own Shostakovich and (increasingly) Prokofiev.The first point, and Gergiev himself is in no doubt about this, is that Szymanowski belongs right up there with the best of them. An uncredited introductory note (the others, pithy and perceptive, are by Polish-Russian specialist Adrian Thomas) rightly points out that Szymanowski Read more ...
Roderic Dunnett
Valery Gergiev is a human dynamo. Even before embarking on the latest tranche of his (slightly curious) pairing of Szymanowski and Brahms with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been principal conductor since 2007, at the Barbican, the man who is arguably not just a musical but a socio-political force in his native country and music director of the most famous opera and ballet company in the world was down that morning at the Russian Embassy in London, promoting his plans for a whole new complex (Mariinsky 2), which from May next year will dramatically enhance the prospects of an Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Few singers provoke more debate than Rolando Villazón. His off-piste projects - from his Romantic exploration of the Baroque to his spell as a talent contest judge - have been much discussed over the years. By comparison, there's something strangely calm and conventional about Villazón's two latest projects: a new album of Verdi on Deutsche Grammophon and a performance of John Copley's La Bohème at the Royal Opera House. Yet you'd be foolish to ignore either. The celebrated Mexican tenor is the kind of singer who could make the Yellow Pages seem fresh. Theartsdesk caught Read more ...