Classical music
David Nice
With two German giants roaring - Brahms in leonine mode, Richard Strauss more with tongue in armour-plated cheek - it could have all been too much. Not in the eloquent hands of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's Music Director Designate, Vasily Petrenko, or pianist Denis Kozhukhin, the most musically disciplined of Russians.Indeed, you felt this team could have gone on to give us from Brahms's First Piano Concerto to give us the equally titanic Second. I've heard that pairing work in concert with the magisterial Elisabeth Leonskaja, and there's no doubt that when Yefim Bronfman played the Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
It wasn’t really the orchestra’s night. Nor the soloists'. Nor, even, the conductor's. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir totally stole the show, well surpassing the incredibly high standards which they already regularly attain and performing not as a large symphonic chorus but as a something akin to one of the highly specialist choirs with which this country is blessed.That is not to say that all the others on the platform at Philharmonic Hall were at all under par – indeed, they were far from it, setting not one foot wrong in a performance which evidently stirred the audience. Sir Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia kicked off their series of concerts devoted to the edgy culture of the Weimar Republic with a programme that featured three works (out of four) derived in some way from the musical stage. That included, as a rip-roaring finale, the conclusion to Shostakovich’s football-themed ballet from 1930, The Golden Age. Given the theatrical energy that drove the evening along at the Royal Festival Hall, it felt at the outset slightly disappointing that we would see no (non-musical) drama on stage. Until, that is, Salonen got into his skipping, gesticulating stride Read more ...
graham.rickson
Do You Believe in Heather? Chamber music by Ståle Kleiberg (2L)Ståle Kleiberg's String Quartet No 3 is a masterpiece, I think. Small but perfectly formed, it's unassumingly brilliant. Kleiberg’s use of “extended tonality” is fascinating: listen to this quartet blind and you'd have a hard time placing it chronologically. Structurally impressive and melodically rich, it grips like a benign vice. Especially in the closing seconds, a physically exhilarating tie-up of loose ends which culminates in a deliciously unexpected final chord. Honestly, it's seriously, seriously good, and Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
It’s quite a weighty concept, and one which could easily have buckled had both the music and its execution not been of the highest quality. Aurora Orchestra’s "Music of the Spheres" was a concert inspired by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras’s theory that each of the planets in our solar system must emit a particular sound through its orbit. The story goes that while passing a blacksmith at work, Pythagoras noticed that the sound produced by two anvils of differing weights was the same, though an octave apart. He weighed both the anvils and found that their weights had an exact ratio of 2:1 Read more ...
Robert Beale
The BBC Philharmonic have given memorable accounts of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 4 in Manchester before – notably conducted by Günther Herbig in 2010 and by John Storgårds in 2014 – but surely none as harrowingly grim as under Mark Wigglesworth this time. A welcome foil to it, then, were Mahler’s five dream-like Rückert-Lieder, forming the 20-minute first section of the concert programme, and winsomely sung by Roderick Williams.He is a master of so many vocal genres, and in these poem settings demonstrated a surprising variety of expression within the confines of their superficially simple Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night saw the official unveiling of 33-year-old Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali as Principal Conductor Designate of the Philharmonia Orchestra, an appointment that has been widely welcomed, not least on theartsdesk. And while I enjoyed Rouvali’s work I had some reservations, and I would like to see him again before coming to a firm judgment.Rouvali’s conducting is extrovert, with flamboyant left-hand gestures and a right-hand which is more about the upbeat than the downbeat – indeed at times he abandons the down entirely in favour of a circular beat when building momentum. This gives a Read more ...
Richard Bratby
You can tell a lot from the opening of Brahms’s Second Symphony. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra began it – and it’s not the first time they’ve done this in a big German symphony – as if in mid-flow: a broad, sunlit river of music, rolling out as if it had already been going on somewhere else already, and we’d only just tuned in.And if there’s one characteristic that defined this performance, it’d be that combined sense of inevitability and wonder. There was more to it than just that, of course: Birmingham's Symphony Hall offers near- Read more ...
David Nice
There was a special celebratory aura to the start of Swedish city Gothenburg's first Point Festival. Earlier in the week its Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor, electrifying Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali, had not only announced a renewed contract there but also been appointed to the same position with our own Philharmonia Orchestra, to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen. Further excitement was further guaranteed by the fact that two of the world's finest ensembles, the GSO and violinist-genius Terje Tønnesen's uniquely innovative Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, would share five of the 11 major events, all Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Playing with such energy, such synergy and such general camaraderie at the start of a tour must surely pave the way for even greater things to come. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Nicola Benedetti kicked off their European tour at Birmingham Town Hall, ahead of performances in Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. Opening with Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto, Benedetti gave a captivating solo performance, while directing the orchestra with assurance and style. Commanding the SCO, Benedetti’s leadership from the violin was strong and compelling, as were her cadenzas, where her solo playing Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As one half of British politics convulsed into a deeper spasm of suicidal fury, it came almost as a relief to hear a great Anglo-Italian conductor lead an impassioned Roman orchestra in a massive, terrifying symphony once described by a (German) maestro as the first example of musical nihilism. Ah, but that’s the paradox of Mahler’s Sixth. His so-called “Tragic” symphony – though he disavowed that label for the epic, 85-minute work he premiered in 1906 – might amount to an overpowering expression of grief, rage, and despair at the cruelty of fate. But to get there Mahler not only deploys, but Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Expectations ran high for this final concert in Benjamin Grosvenor’s Barbican/Milton Court series, especially after the magic he and the Doric Quartet wrought in their February performance. Last night’s effort did not produce quite such inspiring results, mainly due to a slightly odd impression that pianist and some of the quartet were coming to the music from radically different directions that did not always blend.The Dorics opened with Janáček’s first string quartet, "The Kreutzer Sonata", modelled on Tolstoy’s short story of adulterous love and murder – music that still sounds startlingly Read more ...