Classical music
David Nice
Three great pianists, one of the world’s top clarinettists and two fine string players in a single concert: it’s what you might expect from a chamber music festival at the highest level. What I wasn’t anticipating on the first evening in Stavanger was to move from the wonderful cathedral to an old labour club up the hill, now a student venue with two halls, for a late-night cabaret and hear five more remarkable performers.Such is the free and easy way you come across top quality in unexpected formations at Stavanger. A lot of it has to do with the boundary-pushing of the clarinettist in Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Legends, myths, and Nietzsche’s Superman - which for the purposes of this London Philharmonic Prom was none other than Vladimir Jurowski himself. His extraordinary ear, his nurturing and layering of texture, was a constant source of intrigue and delight and at least one performance - that of Sibelius’ tone poem Pohjola’s Daughter - was revelatory in its musical insights. That began distinctively with a strange little serenade for cello (Kristina Blaumane) and took us to wild and wonderful places in the hinterland of Sibelius’s imagination.But on a blind listening who might we have supposed Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók: Violin Concertos 1 and 2 Isabelle Faust (violin), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding (Harmonia Mundi)Bartók‘s Violin Concerto No 2 remains a work more admired than loved; concertos by Prokofiev, Britten and Shostakovich still receive far more performances and recordings. You hope that Isabelle Faust’s new disc will change things. She and conductor Daniel Harding scythe through the concerto’s difficulties, and what emerges is a dramatic, lyrical and accessible work. Bartók’s opening folk-melody, introduced slyly after a few bars of sultry harp chords, is a wonderful Read more ...
David Nice
You may well ask whether theartsdesk hasn’t already exhausted all there is to say about Glyndebourne’s most celebrated Britten production of recent years. I gave it a more cautious welcome than most on its first airing, troubled a little by the literalism of Michael Grandage’s production and the defects in all three principal roles. Alexandra Coghlan was more enthusiastic about this season’s revival but found one crucial shortcoming in Mark Padmore as Captain Vere, the god of the floating kingdom suffering a mortal blow when his repressed resident villain the Master at Arms John Claggart is Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
Proms enthusiast that I am, it still isn't often that I leave the Royal Albert Hall with a face that aches from smiling for hours on end. But judging by the endlessly ecstatic applause that greeted John Wilson and his orchestra at the end of every piece (and occasionally during) of the Hollywood Rhapsody Prom, I was by no means the only one.Expectations are always high for Wilson's outings. His orchestra is the classical equivalent of a rock supergroup - as David Benedict explained in his preview of the programme. And it's not just an orchestra - as the demands of different pieces revealed, Read more ...
David Nice
So for one last time this season the impossible colosseum of Albertopolis became the Wagnerian holiest of holies – to be precise, the Cathedral of the Holy Grail - and once again I fell in love with the beast transfigured. Justin Way, the one artist common to all seven Wagner operas as their subtle semi-stager, should be the delegate to receive the award the Proms deserve for highest achievement of bicentenary year; and it seemed right to have Sir John Tomlinson, albeit by dint of another bass’s indisposition, giving his benediction as the witness of a final miracle.No mere ghost of Wagnerian Read more ...
David Benedict
Fingers on buzzers: which piece of music at this year’s Proms boasts a percussion section including glockenspiel, xylophone, five pitches of cowbells, car horn, taxi horn, anvils, revolving door noise, smashing glass, bubble-wrap-popping, pistol-shot and elastic band? OK, here’s a clue: it’s by Scott Bradley (1891-1977). Who? Bradley (pictured below) was the man who wrote the music for 113 of the 114 Hanna-Barbera/MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons and Tom and Jerry at MGM – a new, six-minute thrill-ride suite of his work – is part of John Wilson’s Hollywood Rhapsody Prom broadcast live on BBC Four Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It may not be the land of milk and honey, but as the home of wine and apricots Lower Austria’s Wachau might just be even better. Bookended by the towns of Melk and Krems, this stretch of the Danube valley is absurdly picturesque, strewing the banks of the river with enough wooded hillsides and ruined castles to fill a Gothic novel (or several).But at just 50 miles from Vienna this storybook-wilderness is really anything but wild. The crags are neatly terraced into vineyards (earning the region its nickname of “the Tuscany of Austria"), while the abbeys and castles tell a tale of religious and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The visits of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester are a regular Proms highlight, only preceded (for me) by the John Wilson Orchestra in the speed with which they go from announcement to diary. Last year’s concert under Gatti was a whirling celebration of dance – a beautifully programmed narrative that spun us from Wagner to Ravel and left us breathless. The year before Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov brought us passions from East and West, united by the precision of Sir Colin Davis. This year it was the turn of Shostakovich – that youth orchestra staple – and for the first time I was left a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Rachmaninov: The Bells, Symphonic Dances Rundfunkchor Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle (Warner Classics)The red spine on the jewel case and the typeface look familiar enough, though the top right hand corner of the CD cover shows Warner Classics’ logo. EMI Classics is no more. After more than 30 years, Sir Simon Rattle is no longer an EMI recording artist. His first release under the new regime has some sensational highspots – notably an exhilarating, colourful account of Rachmaninov’s choral symphony The Bells. Konstantin Balmont’s doomy Poe-inspired text proved an Read more ...
David Nice
Prokofiev’s Fifth is a symphony for which the conductor’s setting tends to be turned to either bright and light or dark and heavy. Perhaps because of the composer’s perceived joker role as set against Shostakovich the symphonic chronicler of Soviet tragedy, Vassily Sinaisky at the 2005 Proms made a glib, glossy showpiece of it. Valery Gergiev has always veered to the black side. But last night Yannick Nézet-Séguin worked sympathetically with the humane inscaping of the orchestra Gergiev did so much to mould, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, to give the best of all possible worlds, emphasising the Read more ...
David Nice
Concert programmes are designed to make the mind flexible with constant contrasts. More often, though, the great is the enemy of the good-ish. Last night an Elgar masterpiece was always going to overshadow its second-half predecessor, a hazily pleasant piece for strings and – novelty value – six harps by the colleague Elgar called “dear old Gran”, candidate for this Proms season's resuscitation attempt Granville Bantock. And earlier, Sibelius bopped a BBC commission on the head with supernatural noises that could have been conjured yesterday.Always beware – I’ve written it several times Read more ...