Classical music
David Kettle
It was to have been the culmination of principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s Brahms symphony cycle with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But with Ticciati laid up with a herniated disc, we’re told, it fell to the SCO’s principal guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine to step in at the last minute. What Ticciati would have made of the concert, and of the concluding Brahms Fourth, of course, we’ll never know – and it would be churlish to speculate. What Krivine did make of the evening, however, was something really rather remarkable.Remarkable in his passion and energy, his boundless enthusiasm for the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Funny thing, musical fashion. Most listeners would call Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances a popular classic – yet before tonight, I doubt they’d had a professional performance in Birmingham this century. Then there’s the case of Osvaldo Golijov. Remember him? The very fact that it’s taken 10 years for a work as substantial and appealing as his cello concerto Azul to receive this UK premiere tells you all you need to know about how far his stock has fallen – at least for now.It owed this performance to the CBSO’s assistant conductor Alpesh Chauhan and principal cello Eduardo Vassallo (pictured below Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Nature, nationalism, folk culture: the broad themes of Norway’s visual arts map easily onto its music. That has given Leif Ove Andsnes and his colleagues plenty of leeway in planning their musical tributes to the painter Nikolai Astrup. For this, their second programme at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (which is hosting the first ever exhibition of Astrup’s work outside Norway, and the first major one worldwide) the three musicians presented a range of surprising facets of the nation’s musical psyche. We heard the folk themes, of course, but classical and even Baroque elements were also explored Read more ...
Marshall Marcus
2016 began with the passing of Pierre Boulez, arguably the doyen of modernism in the field of classical music. Now, only a couple of months later, it is the turn of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a musician occupying a similar level of singular elevation but this time in what is often described (certainly inadequately in this case) as the "period instrument" movement.Harnoncourt was clearly an inspiration to generations of period instrument musicians, including generations like mine that came to the "movement" in the 1970s and '80s; he taught us not only about grammar and its expression, not simply Read more ...
David Nice
It's rare that a sponsor does more than stump up the money for culture and sometimes request a mention in a review (usually ignored). Last night's godparent, though, the Savings Bank Foundation DNB, is a true self-styled "collaborator", responsible not only for the first major exhibition bringing the remarkable Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup to the world and public-spirited owner of the greatest collection of his paintings and woodcuts, many on display here, but also through its subsidiary Dextra Musica providing the "Kreisler Bergonzi" violin and the Guadagnini violin on loan to the two Read more ...
graham.rickson
Francis Chagrin: Symphonies 1 and 2 BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (Naxos)Born Alexander Pauker in Bucharest in 1906, Francis Chagrin's name change occurred after pitching up in Paris in the early 1930s to pursue a musical career, his personal chagrin a result of disinheritance and an unhappy divorce. His teachers included Dukas (see below) and Nadia Boulanger, Chagrin supporting his studies by playing the piano in nightclubs. He moved to London in 1936, later describing himself as “Romanian by birth, British by nationality and cosmopolitan by inclination.” A busy career took in Read more ...
David Kettle
Just a few days earlier, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra had been doing a pretty convincing impression of a symphony orchestra in a powerful Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony under John Storgårds. And here they were, in crisp, nimble Mozart and Beethoven, being a thoroughly convincing period band – well, with valveless horns, at least. They’re nothing if not versatile.But the real joy of their conductorless concert – and joyful it truly was – was its laying bare of the mechanics of music making itself, and in just about every combination made possible by the absence of a conductor. For that, Read more ...
geoff brown
In the deep recesses of my brain lies a distant memory of an early lesson in musical appreciation in primary school. Excerpts from Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony were being played. The teacher asked us what images came to mind. The answers came fairly quickly, prodded by the music’s title: a babbling brook, a thunderstorm, twittering birds. I was on my way.That childhood scene suddenly popped up during this spotty BBC Symphony Orchestra concert. It featured the latest manifestation of a burgeoning trend to do the audience’s visual imagining for them by commissioning a film-maker and dangling Read more ...
David Nice
London has been missing out on Boris Giltburg for too long. He's been playing Shostakovich concertos back to back with Petrenko in Liverpool, and the big Rachmaninov works up in Scotland (see theartsdesk's review today of the latest Royal Scottish National Orchestra programme). But like his similarly Russian-born peers – take your pick of a favourite among Yevgeny Subdin, Daniil Trifonov, Rustem Hayroudinoff, Nikolay Lugansky, Alexander Melnikov and Dennis Kozhukhin – the 32-year-old Israeli-based pianist unleashes astonishing stamina and intellect in cleverly-concocted recital programmes; we Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
To a freezing grey night in Scotland’s capital, the conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto brought a welcome ray of Mexican sunshine. Wearing a broad grin he marched onto the platform of the Usher Hall and launched into Rodion Shchedrin’s impish Concerto for Orchestra No.1, Naughty Limericks, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. As its title suggests, this short piece is virtuosic mayhem for a large orchestra: at first hearing it has the swagger and tomfoolery of Gershwin’s An American in Paris but with the admixture of an earthy bawdiness that is totally Russian.Prieto, a tall man, conducts Read more ...
graham.rickson
Louis Aubert: Sillages, Violin Sonata etc Jean-Pierre Armengard (piano), Alessandro Fagiuoli (violin), Olivier Chauzu (piano) (Grand Piano)Louis Aubert's piano work Sillages is ranked alongside Ravel's Gaspard in the sleeve notes to this disc, and one source places him among the greatest of French composers. It's impossible to judge on the basis of one 70-minute CD, but the four works by Aubert played here are exceptionally good and don't deserve to have slipped through the cracks. You suspect that bad luck is at the root of his neglect. Born in 1875, Aubert sang the “Pie Jesu” as a boy Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In 2007 Maxim Vengerov had to withdraw completely from violin playing, and stayed away for four years. He had suffered the after effects of a weight-lifting injury to his shoulder, and needed surgery. But he also described at the time that he felt he needed to re-learn the instrument. If people – like the writer of last night's programme introduction – now refer casually to his “effortless virtuosity”, it is clearly something which has been acquired with an intense effort and sense of purpose. At the age of 41, the violinist has indeed now reached a delightful ease and naturalness of Read more ...