Classical music
Glyn Môn Hughes
The prospect of a new concerto from a largely unknown composer who, it’s safe to say, had never been performed previously in Liverpool may have seemed a little daunting. By the end of the 22-minute world premiere, however, rapturous applause greeted this approachable, tuneful, understated and, above all, gentle work. This was so much the case that it will no doubt be heard again soon.Soloist Cormac Henry, the principal flute of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, continued the long-established tradition of commissioning major works which showcase the RLPO's principals. So it was that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Kalkadungu: Music for didjeridu and orchestra William Barton (didjeridu) (ABC Classics)We all think that we know what a didjeridu sounds like. Mere words can’t begin to describe the noise made by William Barton in full flow. It’s a sonorous, low roar that sets your stomach wobbling, made more startling by the array of harmonics and overtones which buzz around over the top. There’s also Barton’s sheer technique, circular breathing allowing him to sustain notes for improbable lengths. Martin Buzacott’s notes refer to the didgeridu as “the sound of the Australian earth, the ochre-coloured Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
When you hear Christian Tetzlaff play you hear Brahms, or Beethoven or, in this case, Bach. What you don’t hear a lot of is Tetzlaff himself. I mean that in the best possible way – so willing is the violinist to submerge himself, to set aside ego and agenda. It’s an approach that is at its purest in Bach’s solo violin music, and as he presented the sonatas and partitas to a full Wigmore Hall last night the generosity of this extraordinary musician allowed his audience to set ourselves aside for a moment too as we listened.It has been almost 20 years since Tetzlaff first recorded Bach’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Fans of the Leeds International Piano Competition argue that this triennial event, now in its 49th year, has done more to raise the city’s profile than any other local institution. Supporters of Leeds United would doubtless disagree, but Dame Fanny Waterman’s long-running contest has grown into an influential, internationally renowned affair. Dame Janet Baker awards the prizes. Lang Lang is now the competition’s Global Ambassador along with Honorary Ambassador Aung San Suu Kyi. Waterman, now an improbably spritely 91, is still very much in control of proceedings.Perusing the names of winners Read more ...
theartsdesk
The BBC Proms are steeped in traditions, many admirable, some arcane, the odd one ever so slightly maddening. In the short life of The Arts Desk - we turned three on Sunday, the day after the 2012 Proms season came to a close - another tradition has come into being. Every year we publish a gallery of portraits of conductors at work. These astonishing photographs are all by Chris Christodoulou, who has been capturing the Proms in pictures for 31 years.These, it should be stated, are the images which are very much not released for use by the press after each Prom. And you can see why. They find Read more ...
simon.broughton
During an orchestral rehearsal, it’s tense in a TV scanner at the best of times. A scanner is one of the huge vans parked outside the Royal Albert Hall with a wall of screens showing the shots from the cameras within. There’s a large huddle of BBC radio and television vans for the whole season. But there was another outside broadcast encampment on Saturday for the Last Night of the Proms, which was being broadcast in 3D for the first time. This is where all of us in the truck – members of the production team, technical experts, BBC executives - were wearing dark glasses to see the 3D image Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The BBC Symphony Chorus did a mass Mobot. A posse of medal-winning rowers and sailors led the encore of Rule, Britannia. The Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja entered in Team GB trackies. It has been, we can probably agree, a summer unlike others we have known. Every year the Last Night of the Proms celebrates Britishness as if we’ve won a stack of golds and wowed the world, when mostly – these no longer being the 1890s - we haven’t. But for obvious reasons last night’s Last Night had the chance to put clear blue water between itself and the regular warm bath for jingoists. In the new dispensation Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra can play Haydn’s last symphony - No 104 “London” - in its sleep but that is not, I hasten to add, the impression one wants to take away from any performance of it and especially not in the city that inspired it. The music tells us that Haydn had a rather better time in our capital than Bernard Haitink would have us believe but this rather dogged account on the penultimate night of the Prom season seemed to suppress the work’s genial good humour and pre-empt most of its surprises with a one-size-fits-all approach. Haydn was many things - dull was not one of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gershwin: Music for Piano and Orchestra Freddy Kempf, Bergen Philharmonic/Andrew Litton (BIS)Programme your CD player to play this disc in reverse order, so that Gershwin’s cheeky, pithy Variations on "I Got Rhythm" opens proceedings. You sense Gershwin’s harmonic and rhythmic confidence soaring; this little piece never puts a foot wrong. Freddy Kempf’s performance is brimful of zip and zing, and so dazzling that your first instinct is to listen to it again. Kempf is even better in the similarly neglected Second Rhapsody, a 1931 work which the composer regarded as one of his greatest Read more ...
Ismene Brown
You’ve never seen so many people at a Prom, thousands of them packed into every space of the Albert Hall inside, while outside a 100-metre line of hopefuls queued in vain to stand in a pit where a small cat couldn’t have been added. But then this was a luxury Prom: with the Vienna Philharmonic and two musicians of golden integrity and sensitivity, lifetime members of the high table, the pianist Murray Perahia and the conductor Bernard Haitink playing two works born in Vienna.Size matters in the Albert Hall - they played spacious Beethoven and epic Bruckner - but it takes musicians of special Read more ...
William Berger
Classical albums are seldom biographical, but Insomnia turned out to be a much more personal journey than I first realised. In the summer of 2010, I was a prize winner in the Ernst Haefliger Competition in Bern, Switzerland. Part of the award was a debut recital in the Lucerne International Festival the following year. The festival theme for 2011 was “Nacht”. That’s it; one tiny word that encompasses so much. How was an unknown artist, like myself, going to attract an audience to my song recital when they’d be more tempted by the likes of Véronique Gens singing “Nuit d’etoiles” and other Read more ...