Classical music
David Nice
For the first 20 or so minutes and the second encore of this generous recital, I turned into a Trifonite, in thrall to the 28-year-old Russian pianist's communicative powers. Has Scriabin, in an imperious sweep from early to late, ever made more consistent sense? Could anyone else transcribe the opening sleigh-ride into mysticism and back of Rachmaninov's "choral symphony" The Bells, his most lustrously orchestrated movement, and come out shining?Even when he's bending the music to his own seemingly mercurial will, Trifonov is never less than watchable and worth hearing, though whether his Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mieczysław Weinberg – where to begin? The composer died in obscurity in 1996, but his music has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity over the last ten years, culminating in this year’s global celebrations for the centenary of his birth. His music is lyrical and deeply expressive, but audiences can be forgiven for not knowing quite what to make of him. He was immensely prolific, and his works are diverse, yet a distinctive voice runs throughout them.Weinberg was a Polish Jew who spent most of his life in Moscow, and, depending where we look, we find Polish, Jewish and Russian influences. He was Read more ...
David Nice
The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius, this ostensibly more clear-cut oratorio has less sense of form; it's fragmentary or modern, according to taste. I doubt, even so, if a better argument could be made for it than that from last night's team and its keen guide, Martyn Brabbins – a more flexible shaper, let's be honest, than the admirable champion of the work he was replacing, Mark Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This recital finds Angela Hewitt nearing the end of her “Bach Odyssey”, a project to perform all of Bach’s keyboard works, in five cities around the world, between 2016 and 2020. That’s an impressive feat, especially as she performs from memory. Here she presented the English Suites Nos. 4-6, plus an early Sonata, BWV 963.At first glance, none of these works have immediate audience appeal. The English Suites, although mostly based on dance forms, are elaborate contrapuntal constructions, long and with little melodic character. But they proved an ideal vehicle for Hewitt’s pianism, the Read more ...
stephen.walsh
One of the more harmless pastimes of us retired academics is rummaging around among the so-called minor contemporaries of great and famous composers. It often turns out that quite a few of them aren’t minor at all, or at least not minor enough to have to have retired academics dig them out. And two such composers made up nearly the whole of this fascinating opening concert of the annual Brecon Baroque Festival, an event well worth battling through floods, high winds and falling trees to be present at, as was necessary on this occasion.The 2019 festival is all about Bohemia, and the stars of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Iiro Rantala: My Finnish Calendar (ACT)Iiro Rantala’s little commentaries for each of these 12 short pieces are almost worth the CD price alone, offering an astute guide to the typical Finnish psyche alongside handy references to weather and hobbies. This is a journey from darkness to, er, darkness, though there's much light relief along the way. January is the “month of regret”, where Finns lament having overindulged at Christmas and even quitting the booze “won't make them happier people.” Rantala's mellow nocturne makes for beguiling listening, all the more so when set against the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is a repertoire piece nowadays, probably as familiar to as many listeners as to orchestral players, which means you look for something distinctive in any performance to identify its essential quality against all the others.With Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro in charge, concluding the BBC Philharmonic’s concert at the Bridgewater Hall last night, it was the soulful obbligato horn solo in the Scherzo (superbly played by guest principal Itamar Leshem) and the immediately following passage that became the emotional heart of the piece. The movement itself had been Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Every ten years or so Thomas Adès writes a piano concerto and the latest had its UK premiere last night at the Royal Festival Hall, played by Kirill Gerstein and conducted by Adès himself. Following on from the youthful, skittish Concerto Conciso of 1998, and the lush, layered In Seven Days of 2008, the new piece, baldly called just Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, sees Adès engaging with the giants of 20th century piano concerto, fashioning something that simultaneously looks backwards and forwards.The concerto has lots of Adès trademarks: rhythmic complexity in the form of polyrhythms and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Oslo Philharmonic finished its centenary tour of Europe at the Barbican last night with ample proof that it consistently delivers one of the continent’s most well-rounded, and richly satisfying, orchestral sounds. The Norwegians’ modern history may date to 1919, but their stellar reputation only emerged in the 1980s. Then Mariss Jansons, just like Simon Rattle over in Birmingham, shaped a supposedly “provincial” outfit into a regiment of world-beaters. Today, as Vasily Petrenko’s tenure as chief conductor nears its end, his players cultivate sophisticated soundscapes which join Read more ...
David Nice
There are now two septuagenarians playing Schubert at a level no other living pianist can touch. Imogen Cooper celebrated her 70th birthday on 28 August, and marked it at the Wigmore Hall last night with a two-interval epic, poised but full of inner fire and deepest pathos, not long after 74-year-old Elisabeth Leonskaja had touched the heavens playing Beethoven's last three sonatas in a late-night concert and joined with Liza Ferschtman and István Várdai in Schubert's two late piano trios.Leonskaja has also programmed the Schubert triptych of the composer's last year in a single concert, and Read more ...
David Nice
We have John Eliot Gardiner to thank for an unconventional diptych of Czech masterpieces in the London Symphony Orchestra's current season. He had to withdraw from last night's concert - he conducts Dvořák's Cello Concerto and Suk's "Asrael" Symphony on Thursday - but his replacement, Kazushi Ono, was no second-best. Familiar to us in the UK mostly as an opera conductor, firm and clear-headed in the three vivid narratives of the evening, he provided the ideal security for orchestral playing and stunning singing to fly.The programme proved, as always, that there's no slack in Janáček's mature Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Revelatory": it’s one of those words which is now completely devalued through having been carelessly dropped into a thousand press releases. And yet it perfectly describes the results Miklós Perényi achieved in a pair of superb concerts of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano at Wigmore Hall, which were also live-streamed.The Hungarian cellist has an unshakable sense of mission. He stays as literal and as close as he can to Beethoven’s musical intentions, and the trust which he places in the works always seems to find a perfect justification. Now aged 71, Perényi has lived with these Read more ...