Classical music
David Nice
Single adjectives by way of description always sell masterpieces short, and especially the ambiguous symphonies forged in blood, sweat and tears during the Stalin years. The Barbican's advance blurb hit one aspect of Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony - "startlingly buoyant" - and another in Prokofiev's Sixth - "contemplative". Yet you could also, piling on the adverbs, call one fiercely disorenting and the other nightmarishly expressionistic. Sakari Oramo conducting a BBC Symphony Orchestra on top form focused all facets without selling the unsettling underbelly short - while in between, Read more ...
Richard Bratby
There’s always a special atmosphere when the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra returns to Birmingham Town Hall, and it’s not just because of the building’s Greek Revival beauty: the gilded sunburst on the ceiling, or the towering, intricately painted mass of the organ, topped with its cameo of Queen Victoria. Or, for that matter, the sense of history: that you’re occupying the space where Mendelssohn, Dvořák and Elgar premiered major choral works, and where Gounod narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a jilted mistress (advanced students of Birmingham musical history can savour Read more ...
Robert Beale
Edward Gardner was back amongst friends when he opened the Hallé’s Thursday series concerts. This was the place where he made his mark, as the Manchester orchestra’s first ever assistant conductor (and Youth Orchestra music director), and he’s been a welcome visitor ever since. There’s an air of personal authority to him now, and a physical style a little less reminiscent of Sir Mark Elder – from whom he undoubtedly learnt a lot in those early days – and both the Hallé Orchestra members and the Hallé Choir gave him of their best.Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra was characterized by Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Imagine an orchestral concert made up exclusively of contemporary works by living composers: a programme in which every note was written within the last two decades. Imagine not only that this concert is sufficiently popular to fill a 2,000-seat hall with a noticeably youthful and diverse crowd, but that its format is already being replicated regularly by pretty much every major UK symphony orchestra. Now ask yourself how much critical attention such a concert would receive? You wouldn’t be able to pick up the Sunday review supplements for sheer weight of coverage, would you?Well, apparently Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: Works for Keyboard Philippe Grisvard (harpsichord) (Audax)Mention Handel's keyboard output and most folks (including saps like me) will think of his eight imposing Suites… and that's about it. Which is why harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard’s new collection is so useful in plugging the gaps, an attempt “to explore the different faces of Handel”, taking in the years between 1700 and 1740. Grisvard also throws in short pieces by musicians who played a key role in Handel's development. Like his teacher Friedrich William Zachow, whose little Capriccio in D minor is a treat: its four minutes Read more ...
David Nice
Latvia is fighting fit. The recent elections did not see the expected victory for the pro-Kremlin Harmony party; support for the European Union and NATO will be well represented. Last week the feisty Lavtian Ambassador to the UK, Baiba Braže, landed a perfectly diplomatic punch on the smug mug of our latest apology for a Foreign Secretary, taking former Remainer Hunt to task for his outrageous parallels between the EU and the Soviet gulag by reminding him how Latvia had suffered under the USSR and how eagerly it has adopted the best European values. And last night's second Royal Festival Hall Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
During his quarter-century in charge of the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the late Kurt Masur nobly held out a musical hand of friendship and collaboration from the other side of the Iron Curtain. So how heartening to hear that the Southbank Centre has inaugurated a five-year partnership with the venerable Saxons – just when, as Bob Geldof, Simon Rattle, Ed Sheeran, John Eliot Gardiner and other celebs have warned in their recent open letter, the “serious madness” of Brexit threatens to shut British music into an East German isolation of its own.For all his versatility as a conductor, Masur Read more ...
David Nice
You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly planned by Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen, and the baton passed seamlessly from two pairs of hands to the next. All the more remarkable when nothing seemed likely to surpass the infinite poetry of the opening couple, young Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy in Debussy's arrangement of Schumann's Six Pieces in Canonic Form. Nothing did, but there were Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two days after announcing his appointment as their next chief conductor (he takes the reins officially next summer, in time for the Proms), by remarkable good fortune the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic was able to present Omer Meir Wellber as the conductor of their second Bridgewater Hall series concert. It was a harbinger of things to come – he said as much in the talk before the concert – in that he’s an experienced opera conductor and wants to bring the spirit of the stage, and probably the reality of more operatic performances, to the Philharmonic’s programming.So his Mozart opener – Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
There must be something of a beauty parade going on in Liverpool now that Vasily Petrenko has called time on his tenure at Philharmonic Hall. After all, someone will need to step into his shoes from 2021 after he departs for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was refreshing, therefore, to welcome Anu Tali to conduct the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, making her debut with the orchestra. She’s conducted extensively in the USA and in Asia and in many parts of Europe, especially Germany, Scandanavia and her native Estonia. But her appearances in the UK are few and far between. That’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms & Ligeti: Horn Trios André Cazalet (horn), Guy Comentale (violin), Cyril Huvé (piano) (Calliope)This is a reissue from the last years of the early digital era (ie 1989), but it's a seriously good one. György Ligeti’s 1982 Horn Trio is a fascinating piece, ‘un hommage à Brahms’ which contains some striking tunes and virtuosic valveless horn writing but never sounds remotely like Brahms’ own horn trio. Ligeti did acknowledge that the work had “a little to do with Beethoven”, the violin's first entry obliquely quoting the opening of the Op81a Piano Sonata. There's plenty of Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Bach specialists like to explain that the second book of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed around 1740 and thus almost two decades after the first, draws on more of the fancy and daring “modern” music of its time than its more traditional predecessor. Yes, but there’s modern and there’s modern. I don’t think the scholars have yet argued that, among the ear-stretching range of moods and effects encompassed across these 24 pieces, comes a spooky anticipation of Seattle grunge. Listening to Angela Hewitt play the F minor prelude at the Wigmore Hall, with its plaintive Read more ...