Classical music
philip radcliffe
Like a streamlined sandstone-coloured satellite berthed unexpectedly in Manchester’s medieval quarter, the new addition to the country’s largest specialist music school, Chetham’s (pronounced Cheetham’s), makes a confident statement for the future. It looms seven storeys high amidst atmospheric buildings dating back as far as 600 years. At yesterday’s opening ceremony, heralded by a newly-composed fanfare, Head of School Claire Moreland said: “This new building will take Chets into a whole new era, providing the world-class facilities for music making that our students deserve and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Fancy buying a new recording of Bach’s Cantatas? It’ll cost only slightly more than a regular CD. The only snag is it hasn’t been recorded yet, which is where you come in.Over the last few years Sir John Eliot Gardiner has been steadily releasing a complete set of Bach’s church cantatas recorded in 2000 with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in the conditions in which they would have been originally performed. The 27 double-disc release has been described by David Attenborough, who is known for listening to calming music in the jungle, as “the most extraordinary, ambitious and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s 11pm on a Thursday night. The kind of weather that makes balloon animals of umbrellas, that raises a tsunami in a bird-bath, is raging outside. Inside the Harpa concert hall some 300 people are gathered in attentive silence while five musicians, each sat at a brightly-coloured piano barely two feet tall, play hairdryers, flippers, and drop small change from boxes onto the floor, in a solemn performance of John Cage’s Music for Amplified Toy Pianos. Only in Reykjavik; only under Ilan Volkov; only as part of the Tectonics festival.When youthful maverick Volkov was appointed Music Director Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Keyboard Concertos Nick van Bloss, English Chamber Orchestra/David Parry (Nimbus)Nick Van Bloss’s Goldberg Variations receive deserved acclaim when they appeared last year; the pianist’s fascinating backstory eclipsed by brilliant playing and interpretation. As with the Goldbergs, there’s a lot of competition in this repertoire. Van Bloss’s big-boned playing style is attractive and charismatic, and he delights in the opportunities offered by a modern concert grand. Bass lines are discreetly doubled, and the sustain pedal is used sparingly but effectively. He’s not as swift as Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Critical, urgent, hard - those are the three words used about the challenge to get the rich to pay more for the arts by the new man at the tiller. He should know. Jonathan Moulds, European President at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is one of the super-successful, super-wealthy financiers to whom the Cameron government is desperately looking to pick up the slack as they cut back public spending. What the government hopes for is modern-day Medicis - arts patrons who use their wealth to back orchestras, performers, theatres and educational projects - and lots of them. The lobby group for this Read more ...
stefan.simanowitz
Diepkloof, a suburb of the sprawling township of Soweto, is not the most likely of places to find a classical music school, but at the end of a dusty road in the grounds of a Presbyterian Church the haunting strains Dvořák hang above the corrugated iron roof-tops. The hall is home to the Buskaid Soweto String Project, a remarkable initiative which for over 15 years has given hundreds of township youngsters the chance to learn to a classical instrument. Former students have gone on to become professional musicians and Buskaid’s Soweto String Ensemble – recently voted one of the most Read more ...
graham.rickson
Miserere: Choral Music by James MacMillan The Sixteen/Christophers (Choro)Scots composer James MacMillan’s orchestral music has never convinced me, but this collection of a capella choral music is astonishingly accomplished. You can’t help agreeing with The Sixteen’s director Harry Christophers in his opinion that MacMillan’s sacred music can stand comparism with that by Victoria and Poulenc. The brief Miserere, premiered in 2009, opens the disc: its Stygian opening gradually unfolding into music of unbelievable tenderness and cool beauty. It sounds both boldly contemporary and archaic Read more ...