Classical music
Richard Bratby
Birmingham emerged from musical lockdown with Stockhausen. It couldn’t have been anyone else, really. There’s something about Stockhausen’s fusion of modernity and goofy intergalactic romanticism that clearly strikes a chord in the Second City, where the last three decades of music have been measured out in landmark Stockhausen performances: Rattle’s CBSO performances of Gruppen, Birmingham Opera Company’s astonishing 2012 world premiere of Mittwoch aus Licht, and, in 1992, a massive open-air performance of Sternklang in Cannon Hill Park, under the direction of Stockhausen himself.In Read more ...
David Nice
If it all comes across as vividly as this on screen, imagine what it would have been like to witness in person. Which quite a few of us very nearly did, until we had to be disinvited owing to changed government guidelines. Hopefully the move back to reopening of concert halls will admit us in limited numbers to the Wigmore Hall in September, and what a feast it is from this pioneering set-up: 100 events planned up to 22 December, all to be livestreamed (the qualification being that they really ought to charge a small amount for viewing; everything for free makes it hard on smaller outfits Read more ...
David Nice
Before the not-quite-clear all-clear was given for distanced performances indoors, Bold Tendencies already had the perfect summer solution in the floor space beneath its rooftop terrace in Peckham’s former multi-storey car park. Never was its covering more needed than on Saturday night, when the perfect storms, apocalypses and incantations of pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy in Messiaen’s gobsmacking Visions de l’Amen gradually magicked away the torrential rain beyond and the city skyline slowly came into focus again.Nothing in all this, for me, quite matches the God-in-everything Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Images, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune Hallé/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)That Debussy used the Geordie folksong The Keel Row in the first of his three Images for Orchestra is well known, and careful listening makes one realise that he never quotes it in full. The tune is mostly just hinted at, dotted rhythms and modal harmonies implying a grey Tyneside setting. Debussy’s original title was Gigues Tristes, though the melancholy is softened with wry humour. Mark Elder’s Hallé performance is immaculate, the orchestra’s augmented percussion section shining. You notice them again in Read more ...
David Nice
Composer Gian-Carlo Menotti once asked rhetorically what society wanted of performing artists – “the bread of life or the after-dinner mint?” There were a couple of audience members last night – unique in my experience so far of the Fidelio Orchestra Café’s set-up – who clearly wanted pianist Charles Owen’s recital to be the pre-dinner amuse-bouche; one was reading a book from the start, another came down from upstairs during the music to demand a bottle of wine. But generally the small groups of attendees have relished what we’ve had on every musical programme, from Isserlis via Ibragimova Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Lockdown, perhaps more than any other time, has amplified how modern technology can be both a blessing and a curse. Of course, it’s wonderful to have the means to connect with friends and family scattered across the globe; carry on working, learning, eating, praying etc. with others; and enjoy art in new and innovative ways, such as this particular digital series. But how many of us have felt the exhaustion that comes from back to back zoom meetings, the ennui that comes from barely leaving our homes and the self doubt that comes from others’ social media streams? (Does my garden look as nice Read more ...
graham.rickson
William Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony, Ulysses Kay: Fantasy Variations, Umbrian Scene ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Arthur Fagen (Naxos)William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was, briefly, a roaring success after Leopold Stokowski gave the first performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934, and it should have made Dawson a household name. Instead, he returned to his teaching post at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, heading its School of Music until retiring in 1955. Dawson continued to compose and arrange spirituals and achieving recognition as a choral conductor, and that Read more ...
David Nice
Out of a silent and empty City of London, unusually still even for a Sunday afternoon, it felt surreal to come upon a centre of light and activity. Raffaello Morales, Renaissance man, conductor of the Fidelio Orchestra and owner/impresario of its eponymous café which has played host to great performances over the past month, had mustered 23 of the finest London-based players to tackle the ultimate in works for string orchestra. Richard Strauss penned his Metamorphosen in grief at the bombings of the great German and Austrian opera houses. It ends with a direct quotation of the music which Read more ...
Kelton Koch
Joining the Vienna Philharmonic as a student and young professional was an absolute thrill. I had begun to play with the orchestra as an academist in October 2019 and as a full-time member in the Opera in January 2020. I was experiencing many “firsts”: concerts in the Musikverein [Vienna’s magnificent number one concert hall], first tour in Asia, first Vienna Philharmonic Ball and Vienna State Opera Ball. I was anticipating many other “firsts”: Wagner’s Ring Cycle and a European tour with Zubin Mehta, all abruptly interrupted by the sudden spread of COVID-19 into Austria.Of course, it goes Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 Australian World Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (ABC Classics)I love Bruckner’s mature symphonies, but they still baffle me. Mostly in terms of how certain performances work, or don’t work, and the near-impossibility of understanding and explaining exactly why. Then there’s the question of tempo, and how incredibly expansive performances can feel shorter than quick ones. A BBC Music Magazine poll in 2016 asked conductors to nominate their favourite symphonies, and Sir Simon Rattle included Bruckner 8 in his top three. He’s recorded two impressive accounts of the " Read more ...
David Nice
A front-rank pianist only takes on Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in full confidence of being able to handle the massive bells and blazing chants of its grand finale, “The Great Gate of Kiev”. To risk it in a far from large café space adds to the element of danger and excited anticipation. Louis Schwizgebel, sonorous master of the house Bechstein – already an instrument designed not to overwhelm – carried it off with high radiance. It will be a long time before we can experience again the full orchestral blaze of Ravel’s peerless orchestration, so this was – despite even the pianist’s Read more ...
David Nice
There is genius not only in the rainbow hues of Pavel Kolesnikov’s playing but also in the way his chosen programmes resonate. He’s given us interconnected wonders from across the centuries, but chose to focus on the greatest of composers for the piano in only his third such recital. His first all-Chopin concert was given in sentimental homage to his birthplace, Novosibirsk; the second was a BBC Lunchtime Prom of Mazurkas; and this third, under circumstances even more exceptional than the Prom, brought light to his first UK audience after lockdown – a privileged 25 of us each evening.In Read more ...