Classical music
David Nice
Eliot's "time future contained in time past" has been conductor Vladimir Jurowski's unofficial motto throughout a festival which has had to take itself very seriously, and managed miraculously to carry a surprisingly large, loyal audience of all ages and persuasions along with it. Such stringent conditions could hardly be otherwise given the focal point of an uncompromising genius.Alfred Schnittke started out by making the whole of musical history his own frenetic stamping ground, earnest in jest and deadly serious even at his most sarcastic. He was no different Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.
2 December 1982: Britney Spears is 27. There is some resistance to Britney hereabouts, so I thought I'd post a version of "Toxic" sung acoustically by Galia Arad to demonstrate that she does have some terrific songs. If Galia - who with her cousin Lail, should become much better known in 2010 - loves Britney, who are we less cool mortals to resist her?
{youtube width="400" height="300"}9HVJTPtZkWk{/youtube}Of course Britney's production is also first-rate - those Egyptian film strings are awesome, no?
{youtube width="400" height="300"} Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
There are so many ways a dramatic production of Messiah can go wrong it is almost unbearable to think about it. Certainly, there was a palpable buzz of nervousness in the Coliseum about last night’s audience as they took their seats. Did English National Opera really think it could pull it off? Could it avoid the pitfalls into triteness that surely lurk at every corner? How would the chorus manage it? And please God, let it be better than Glyndebourne’s 2007 St Matthew Passion.How do you go about staging Messiah anyway? It hardly provides a rip-roaring narrative stream, and there’s a danger Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Thank God for Les Arts Florissants. Without the assiduous efforts of this pretty, chic French ensemble and its expat American conductor William Christie, one of the great periods in musical history, that of the French high baroque, would still be shrouded in darkness. What would we now know of the Debussy of the 18th century, Jean-Philippe Rameau, or of the silky solemnity of Henry Desmarest, or of the festive André Campra, or of that arse-licker par excellence Jean-Baptiste Lully? Virtually nothing. And my ears for one would be the poorer.Last night we received portraits of each of these Read more ...
edward.seckerson
English tenor Mark Padmore has enjoyed a career that has seen him grow from a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, through membership of The Sixteen and Hilliard ensembles, to becoming the international Evangelist of choice in performances of Bach’s Passions across the globe. He talks about the people who influenced him – William Christie and Philippe Herreweghe among them – and the prospect of Britten operas in waiting. Padmore is currently enjoying a year-long residency at the Wigmore Hall.Listen here
More information on Padmore's residency at Wigmore Hall
edward.seckerson
J S Bach was very much at the spiritual centre of this cunningly devised programme for the South Bank’s current Alfred Schnittke fest: Between Two Worlds. But by the time we emerged shaken but, in my case, not stirred by Schnittke’s preposterous 3rd Symphony the entire Austro-German symphonic legacy had flashed before our ears. Well, not flashed exactly, rather ground to a halt from a slow rewind of ever diminishing returns.But back to Bach. His Chorale “Es ist genug” is the music of sorrowful farewell passing through Alban Berg’s orchestra in the closing pages of his Violin Concerto and only Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Elisabeth Leonskaja, who turned 64 on Sunday, is one of the last links to a grand school of Russian pianism where technique meant the marshalling of piano possibilities into a positively orchestral array of expressive means. Often noted in harness with Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she frequently played, Leonskaja deserves renown of her own. Her all-Chopin recital last night at the Wigmore Hall had a splendour and focus that was truly of the Russian tradition, fervent in feeling, masterly in discipline, a serious line in beauty.All-Chopin programmes aren’t that common, surprisingly, Read more ...
David Nice
The Schnittke Festival kicked off on Sunday at the Royal College of Music with electric and bass guitars as part of the unwieldy ensemble. Lodged in the Royal Festival Hall last night, Vladimir Jurowski’s programming continued in the second concert with similar flair, but this time two 18th-century horns and two cors anglais were the odd ones out. We were back in 1764 and the early days of the symphony viewed through the prism of Joseph Haydn – every inch as much of an original as Wagner and Schnittke, who were to join him later, and just as able to bend the past to his own ends.So a Read more ...
David Nice
Whether or not you rate Vladimir Jurowski among the top 10 hardest-working, most inspirational conductors in the business – I do – you have to award him the palm for enterprise. His passionate involvement in youth projects of various kinds, and a quest for innovative programming that would send most concert managements running, combined in the launch of his latest festival centred around the work of a single composer.He could have begun his exploration of Alfred Schnittke, Russia’s greatest maverick composer after Shostakovich, with full pomp in the Royal Festival Hall with the orchestra he Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A continuing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.22 November 1965: Bjørk released her first self-titled album at the age of 11, at 14 she was in a punk band called Spit and Snot, and has since gone on to be one of the most successful and original musicians on the planet. Many of her classic videos have had their sound removed on YouTube, but "All is Full of Love" directed by Chris Cunningham is up there still, and features the best lesbian robot love scene ever filmed.{youtube width="400"}EjAoBKagWQA{/youtube}Before leaving Bjork, perhaps we should have a guided tour of her house in Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It is quickly apparent when you are in the company of exceptional talent. In even the most hackneyed repertoire nothing is quite as you expect it to be: there’s a charge in the air, phrasings take on a different urgency, textures are opened up and newly revealed. And on this night, certain revelations concerning Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony were, under the exciting baton of Vasily Petrenko, no longer conjecture but irrefutable fact.But first there was a Night on the Bare Mountain to endure and if you thought that the tamer Rimsky-Korsakov version of Mussorgsky’s classic had ceased to Read more ...
David Nice
Bryn Terfel is a good guy. I know; he never forgets a face, and I’ve seen him making the tea for the entire team at a recording session – no one-off, they assured me. Yet the nature of the bass-baritone beast is given over to more villains than noble souls. The "bad boys" of opera and musical theatre are grist to Terfel’s satanic mill in his latest CD-linked tour. Although inevitably given the demands of live performance there’s less than meets the ear on the disc, Bryn as dark god in concert gives far more than those recent short-shrifting divas Fleming and Gheorghiu.What a relief, too, that Read more ...