Classical music
Bernard Hughes
Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is one of the most ineffable masterpieces of the 18th century, its poignancy increased by the fact that the 26-year-old composer died shortly after writing it. A medieval meditation about Mary at the foot of the cross, it pitches two voices against a small orchestra, presented in a dramatised production this week by the young historical performance ensemble Figure.The original two voices (mezzo and soprano) became five singers, the music democratically shared between them: the legendary Emma Kirkby and Catherine Carby (pictured below by Kristina Allen) Read more ...
Robert Beale
There was a common factor in the superficially disparate elements of this Hallé concert, and it wasn’t just the fact that both soloist and conductor were female. It was an experience of the colours of the music and a sense of enjoyment of what orchestral music offers.The conductor was Kristiina Poska, chief conductor of the Flanders Symphony Orchestra and herself Estonian, with a firm track record in concert hall and opera house. She has a reputation for her interpretations of Sibelius and brought her reading of his First Symphony to this podium, but first she offered us Brits something Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
One of the many delightful discoveries in this dynamic, imaginative lunchtime concert was that Handel and Telemann had a thing for sending each other flowers. Not bouquets, but earthy bulbs and tubers, “I am insatiable where hyacinths and tulips are concerned, greedy for ranunculi, and especially for anenomes,” Telemann wrote.Taking the theme of “New Beginning”, Ensemble Augelletti (pictured below right by Abe Kleinman) explored the relationships between Handel and his contemporaries as they used different compositional styles to create fresh settings for themes from their own or Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
For the second year in a row the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chose to share its platform in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall with the young musicians of St Mary's Music School. As RSNO chief executive Alistair Mackie pointed out in a short opening speech, the links between the two organisations run deep, as many players in the RSNO started their musical careers at St Mary's.The format of the evening was a repeat of last year, with 40 minutes or so of short solos from the youngsters preceding the main RSNO concert. As before, the orchestral stage set was shoved into the wings to hollow out enough Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
It began with the tolling of a lone bell and ended in a transcendent blaze of golden light. The UK premiere of James MacMillan’s Fiat Lux – first performed in Los Angeles in 2023 to mark the dedication of the dazzling crystalline Christ Cathedral, formerly a televangelist backdrop, as a Catholic church – was as exhilarating as it was meditative, an iridescent exploration of spirituality and sound.James MacMillan – who during the concert was awarded with an Ivors Academy Fellowship to mark his status as one of our most successful living composers – conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra himself Read more ...
Peter Whelan
There's something undeniable about the way music can weave itself into the fabric of our lives, shaping our passions and leaving an indelible mark on our journeys. For me, this magic has been particularly intertwined with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra. My first encounter with them, back in 1992, wasn't live in a concert hall, but rather through the flickering screen of a television.A Proms performance of Handel's monumental oratorio Israel in Egypt had captivated me so completely that I, a wide-eyed teenager, felt compelled to record it onto a VHS tape. I watched it on repeat, immersing Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Most concert promoters will tell you that contemporary music tends to be, to put it politely, a tricky sell, which is one of the reasons why it’s most often programmed alongside Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. A whole programme of the stuff tends to be box office suicide, so it’s almost never done.It’s a testament to something or other, then, that not only was (almost) everything in this Scottish Chamber Orchestra programme written in the last 50 years, but that they got a remarkably good audience for it; certainly nothing smaller than another regular season concert. What’s their secret?Some of it Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bloch: Schelomo, Bruch: Kol Nidrei, Dohnányi: Konzertstück Tim Posner (cello), Berner Symphonieorchester/Katharina Müllner (Claves)You know that some releases will be good within just seconds of pressing play. Here, the seductive, rich tone of Katharina Müllner’s Berner Symphonieorchester draws you in like a magnet, the string harmonics heard two minutes into Bloch’s Schelemo hitting you like a sharp poke in the ribs. And cellist Tim Posner sits so comfortably in the mix, sound engineer Johannes Kammann deserving a shout out – this is one of those rare recordings that sounds fabulous at Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Like Hamlet or Fidelio, Schubert’s Winterreise can withstand and overcome (almost) any kind of re-imagining. In the case of Hans Zender’s 1993 “composed interpretation” of the work for chamber orchestra – and sundry sound effects – the new model has itself become a near-canonical classic. Allan Clayton first brought his large, lustrous but vulnerable and involving tenor to the re-orchestrated song cycle in 2015. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, Jane Mitchell’s production (with Clayton billed as co-director) confirmed that Zender’s music, and the panoply of stage effects that Read more ...
David Nice
“Spring Awakenings” promised as the theme of this year’s London Handel Festival began with a big if messy vernal bouquet of “Alleluia"s and “God Save the King”s. Esther, Handel's first London oratorio, seemed like an appropriately jubilant way to celebrate Laurence Cummings' 25th and final year as festival director.That meant cramming more than 60 musicians in to the east end of the not exactly commodious St George’s Hanover Square, and some curious balances for many of us in the packed church. I got an earful of the four oboes, with attendant squeaks from time to time, and their pulsing Read more ...
Laurence Cummings
At the time of writing, rehearsals are well under way for the London Handel Festival 2024. It’s a big year for me as it’s my 25th and final year as Musical Director.Though preparations are keeping me very busy, I have found the odd quiet moment to reflect on the last 25 years. In fact it was 31 years ago that Denys Darlow first asked me to play in the LHF. He was organist of St George’s Hanover Square, and he loved to perform and record Bach Cantatas for BBC Radio 3, until one day a member of the public came up to him and said “You’ve got a bit of a cheek, performing Bach’s music in Handel’s Read more ...
Ed Vulliamy
Towards the end of his book Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann deploys a cogent expression: “chasing history, before it disappears”.Last time the Nash Ensemble devoted a weekend here to music from the Terezín concentration camp, in 2010, there were discussion panels with survivors of that strangest, eeriest of narratives from the Shoah. Zdenka Fantlová (pictured below, then living in Bayswater Road, having survived the camp, Auschwitz and Belsen) described the performance of music and plays when doomed to die as “dancing under the gallows”.With hindsight, that is: no one, she says, knew Read more ...