Classical music
Ismene Brown
I’m standing with my feet on peaks and my head in clouds, looking down steep Alps at the tiny chocolate-brown chalets of little Verbier way below on the green slopes. It’s ravishing up here on the top of Fontanet, and I tarry, gloating over the botanical riches around me of milky-blue gentians, royal-blue harebells, glistening edelweiss, dark little orchids and garnet-bright sedum, watching the trickling water of a brook, and replaying last night’s music in my head. And if you move quick you can do this yourself before next Sunday.There’s an Easyjet to Geneva several times a day, a train ride Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
If much of the Austro-German repertoire is about hiking to a spiritual peak, the Franco-Spanish is about diving down to the orchestral depths. The music of Ravel, Debussy and Falla has beefy shoulders and powerful legs. But the vast watery expanse of the Royal Albert Hall is hard-going even for these expert paddlers. I've never seen anything by these composers that hasn't drowned in this space. So I came to last night's concert hoping that the BBC Philharmonic's new Spanish conductor, Juanjo Mena (he takes over officially next season), would show us all how to ride out these waters.He Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week's chronologically varied selection includes instrumental music written by one of the giants of Elizabethan music and a baffling, beguiling work composed by a 20th-century maverick, inspired by a visit to a Japanese garden. There's also a splendid new recording of an Italian opera which opens with one of the world's most famous tunes.William Byrd: Complete Consort Music Phantasm (Linn Records) This is a collection of music composed by William Byrd for viol consort, probably between 1560 and 1603. The viol is the ancestor of the cello, a fretted, bowed instrument with six strings. It Read more ...
David Nice
It was partly as penance for having missed the previous evening's Czech festival that I arena-prommed for last night's Moravian finale, to be happily strafed by the nine extra trumpets of Janáček's Sinfonietta. I hadn't quite expected to be so on the edge of my first-half seat in wonder at the little miracles of Sibelius's Op 66 Scènes historiques, genius personality more apparent in the first two chords than in all but the last minute or so of Havergal Brian's two-hour Gothic Symphony (but let's not go there again). In between, Sir Mark Elder's conducting didn't always keep his Mancunians on Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost materialised yesterday. And I'm not talking about the transcendental appearance of the Holy Trinity of News International. I'm talking Proms. Last night's two saw a geriatric performance of the Brahms double, a brand spanking new way through an old Rite and a transfiguringly spectral invocation of Schubert's Quintet.
In the earlier prom, Myung-Whun Chung's Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France demonstrated what a capricious beast the French orchestra can be: one moment on top of their game, luminous, surprising, virtuosic; the next, heels dug in, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Never has a French invasion of these shores been quite so welcome. The two-day siege currently being staged in the Royal Albert Hall by Myung-Whun Chung and his Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France opened last night with patriotic fervour in an all-French programme. Even Beethoven’s Triple Concerto began rolling its “R”s when cajoled into life by the dashing Capuçon brothers. While their strongly accented interpretation may not have been to everyone’s taste, as an exhalation after the meditative intensity of Messiaen and Dusapin it was perfectly judged.Showcasing the impossibly blended Read more ...
David Nice
From Middle-earth, middle England and Nibelheim they came, adventurers anxious to acclaim an Unjustly Neglected British Masterpiece. Praise, or curse, their persistence in steering the BBC and the Albert Hall back to Havergal Brian's biggest work after 31 years; hail by all means conductor Martyn Brabbins's flexible command of nine choirs and two orchestras. All I can say is that before I sat through nearly two long hours of continuous music last night, I proclaimed that this was exactly the sort of thing the Proms should be trying. Now I'm hanging out the garlic and spraying the air Read more ...
David Nice
Here we are again. Marvel as you enter at the aptly gaudy lighting of Albert's colosseum, but know that unless your place is with the Prommers towards the front of the arena, the musicians will often sound as if they're in another galaxy - maybe one hinted at in the George Herbert words, if hardly the Judith Weir music, of the opening BBC commission, Stars, Night, Music and Light. Though spattered with Messiaenic orchestral paint - not to mention the obbligato sniffalong from my annoying neighbour - it felt like a very tame, rather olde-British gambit. Not so the great blazes and catastrophes Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week’s carefully sifted classical releases include two symphonies by a fastidious, underrated Lancastrian, and a life-enhancing compilation of scratchy recordings conducted by a notable British composer. On a smaller scale, there’s an engaging collection of music for horn and piano, brilliantly performed by a young Hungarian player.The Elgar Edition – The Complete Electrical Recordings of Sir Edward Elgar Various Orchestras and soloists/Sir Edward Elgar (EMI)Elgar made many acoustic recordings of his music between 1914 and 1925. The acoustic recording process used a large horn funnelling Read more ...
theartsdesk
Tonight the doors open for the biggest classical music festival in the world, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. To help you plan your summer visits and listening, theartsdesk's critics gently steer you with their own preferences from the 90 concerts on offer. You can also check the complete list of all Proms on another page. Recommendations are made by David Nice, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, Edward Seckerson, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson, Stephen Walsh and Ismene Brown. David Nice As I intimated when I reported on the press briefing, the prospectus looks more enticing this year Read more ...
natalie.wheen
Getting to Mull is an improbably romantic journey to classical music-making. One can easily understand why Mendelssohn was so affected by his experiences in Scotland – and Mull. On the three-hour train journey from Glasgow one sheds the habits of everyday life: the train winds through thickets of Forestry Commission plantations, which suddenly open out into wild panoramas of mountains and lochs, or a dramatic ruined castle against the skyline. Then the ferry from Oban passes the heavily fortified Duart Castle on its crag guarding the Sound of Mull, which later will be the scene of elegant Read more ...
David Nice
For so many days a year, Cheltenham's Regency symmetry and conservative values totter and buckle as they veer dangerously towards relative festive liberalism. As I sliced into one of the four annual beanfeasts, the Cheltenham Music Festival, it struck me how well lopsided, sometimes painful bendings of a classical framework by Schumann and Brahms sat with a battery of volatile percussion celebrating Steve Reich's 75th birthday. Even the adventure served up by trebles over in Norman and medieval Tewkesbury glimpsed a beast in the jungle. And there wasn't an overall dud among any of the seven Read more ...