Classical music
Richard Wilson
In today’s near-normal times it is easy to forget how hard COVID-19 had hit the music industry, especially for touring orchestras like the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Masked, socially-distanced performances; streamed concerts from empty venues; and an outpouring of home-made YouTube films helped to keep musicians working and audiences culturally fed. However, there was a feeling across the industry that something more inspiring was needed.At the end of November 2020, a month into the second lockdown, the Academy asked us at One31Studio to make a film inspired by Mendelssohn’s Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov concluded their three-concert survey of Beethoven’s violin sonatas on the warmest day of the year. But the Wigmore Hall is always comfortable, and the temperature was well under control. The heat deterred the audience, but those who did attend made up with their impressive enthusiasm, unusual even for the ever-engaged Wigmore regulars.The performance was given on period instruments, still more the exception than the rule for Beethoven chamber music. For the first half, the Sonatas Nos. 4 and 5, Melnikov played a fortepiano appropriate to the era, 1800–01 Read more ...
Gavin Higgins
I was a strange child, I didn’t really fit in. I would twitch and distort my face into awkward shapes. I obsessively bit my fingers and knuckles till they bled. I collected leaflets and piled them high in neat stacks in the corner of my room. I was constantly bombarded with invasive thoughts that would leave me completely paralysed. Teachers would admonish me for ‘showing off’, people would stare, doctors would shrug.It turns out I had Tourette’s Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Finally learning what was "wrong" with me gave my strangeness context but didn’t stop me feeling Read more ...
David Nice
The organisation now proudly and legitimately re-named the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival may be half a century old – of its 52 seasons, those of the two lockdown years can be lopped off the live reckoning – but its outlook is youthful and progressive in so many ways.Of the four (out of seven) concerts I managed to attend, the one that summed it up most strongly for me was its presentation of five Irish women pianists each playing a piece significant to the performer during lockdown, and another chosen by a key frontline worker – a surprisingly deep and emotional programme Read more ...
graham.rickson
Karel Ančerl: Live Recordings (Supraphon)Karel Ančerl’s nascent conducting career was interrupted by World War II, Ančerl and his family being sent to the Theresienstadt camp in 1942. Two years later, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz. Ančerl’s wife and son were murdered; he survived, returning home and gaining a conducting post with Radio Prague. There’s an inspiring quote in this set’s booklet, Ančerl recalling that, “despite having witnessed the abysmal depths of that which a human is capable of doing to a fellow human, I did not lose faith in people – I returned with full Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Considering its status as the most famous piece of classical music [citation needed], Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is actually quite rarely programmed in London. I can’t remember the last time I heard it live before last night, and it took the visiting Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra to return it to the repertoire. They played this often stern music with a smile on their faces, as they did the accompanying Mozart and Bartók.It was, surprisingly, the Bartók – home territory for this orchestra – that struck the only uncertain note of the evening. The Concerto for Orchestra is a late Read more ...
David Nice
It could have been the most electrifying week of the musical year. Alas, Heathrow meltdown kept me from two of Klaus Mäkelä’s Sibelius concerts with his Oslo Philharmonic in Hamburg. But there was still what should have been the grand finale, the heavenstorming Fifth Symphony following Mahler and Lise Davidsen in Berg (and more Sibelius). The euphoria I’d experienced in one live Oslo concert and the Sibelius symphonies on Decca was rekindled.An ecstatic if hardly packed Barbican audience obviously agreed. Acoustic differences on a tour are always going to pose problems, and this hall's Read more ...
David Nice
If you sought a spectacular shrugging-off of jubileemania last night, you could have done no better than this programme to coincide with Italian Republic Day from our own national treasures Antonio Pappano – Knight of the British Empire, if you’ll pardon the expression – and the London Symphony Orchestra.Vivaldi, Puccini and possibly Gabrieli would be known to all; probably not Goffredo Petrassi other than as a name, nor Victor de Sabata other than as a conductor. The revelation of a uniquely original sequence, Petrassi’s Concerto for Orchestra No. 5, stems from the 1950s when he was turning Read more ...
István 'Szalonna' Pál
There's a famous saying that Hungarians are in the middle of Europe. From the West, we have Bach and Palestrina holding our hands; from the East, the Caucasian Turkic peoples. Other nations still need 1,000 years to understand what it means to be Hungarian. In Liszt Mosaics, we want to show our culture, our history and show what the Hungarian soul consists of.When we go abroad, we show it to the world. They feel how important it is – and then they start to search for their roots as well. When we played at the celebration for Prince Charles’ 70th Birthday, we were presented to the audience as Read more ...
Christina McMaster
In 2020, during a gentle easing of lockdown restrictions, I was asked to play for the Culture Clinic sessions at Kings Place, a creative initiative where small groups of up to six people could book a ticket for a private, personally tailored performance. After speaking together briefly, I would then prescribe and perform music I felt they needed to hear.One concert-goer described my role as "Physician of the soul", a job title I like the sound of, and a way to use music that feels meaningful. I’ve been thinking about this format since and how different it was from performing to a large Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jugendstil: Music by Mahler and Schoenberg Beatrice Berrut (piano) (La Dolce Volta)“Is transcription betrayal?” asks pianist Beatrice Berrut in her booklet essay. Emphatically not, Berrut seeing transcription as “an act of homage to the genius of a music whose essence does not change.” Berrut’s arrangement of the “Adagietto” from Mahler 5 is a brilliant reinvention, not a pale imitation. You wonder how she’ll handle Mahler’s sustained lines, so easily playable on orchestral strings, and then grin when you hear the unobtrusive, syncopated Brahmsian accompanying figure that she adds to Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Wigmore Soloists is such a good idea, and still at an early stage of its development. The group brings together top players to perform the wider chamber music repertoire, normally septets and upwards. The hall also gives the players a place they can call their home, plus a sprinkling of Wigmore branding to help them make their way in the world.There have been inevitable delays. Firm plans to set up Wigmore Soloists were already fully made and in place in 2019, but the pandemic and resulting backlogs of postponed concerts have meant that the group is, in reality, only just starting to be Read more ...