Classical music
graham.rickson
This month’s selection includes a flamboyant fin-de-siècle Italian symphony that could give you a nosebleed. A little-known American band provide a fresh take on a British 1930s warhorse, and classy Viennese musicians play some delectable Schumann symphonies. Everyone’s favourite Latin American youth orchestra give us a Stravinsky classic, coupled with a fascinating Mexican rarity. Contrast is provided by two wonderful discs of more intimate music-making - Zoltan Kodály’s magnificent solo cello sonata and some lesser-known songs by Britten. Finally we dip our toes into the world of Read more ...
kate.connolly
"It was only on Monday afternoon that the final scores of three of the movements were put into my hands," says Sir Simon Rattle, chuckling at the memory and casting a mock glance of disapproval at the composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis who is sitting next to him looking rather sheepish. "It makes us realise that composers are human beings just like we are," the conductor adds. "I'm just praying I get all my tempos right by tonight."Even by the usual stressful standards of world premieres, the run-up to this one was a particularly nail-biting affair. I attended the dress rehearsal for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Brilliant though it was to be shooting an Imagine film for BBC One, we did experience the occasional tremor of foreboding about making a programme with Nigel Kennedy. We (that's me and director Frank Hanly) had a bit of previous with Nigel - I'd done several print interviews with him, and we'd shot a couple of short films with him for EMI.The last one was at Rockfield studios in Monmouth for his recent jazz album, Shhh! We'd bowled up out of the pouring rain on a black November night to be greeted like long-lost family members, as Nige plied us with wine and insisted that we join him, his Read more ...
william.ward
One of the downsides of the international media’s obsession with the crimes and misdemeanours of Silvio Berlusconi and his make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of government is that anything that doesn’t fit in with the overall narrative of the crazed, corrupt media mogul destroying an otherwise magnificent, well-organised country, tends not to make the headlines.The UK media is currently full of the Italian premier’s latest assault on the Freedom of Expression. This is a singularly cack-handed bill which aims to prevent one ill - police wire-taps being relayed in the media before trial Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
If the second half of the 20th century saw opera throttled by existential crises, and left composers wondering whether the only future for the art form was for it to be hung out to dry, or to become an arcane intellectualised annex for the musical games then in vogue, Gerald Barry's one-act opera, La plus forte (2006) - receiving its UK premiere in a concert performance last night - marks the end of hostilities. So effortlessly does Barry seem to rise above the tangled, stagnant realities of recent operatic and musical convention, and return and restore the art form to the business of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Istanbul, Turkey, 3-30 JuneThe 38th annual music festival in the jewelled city of culture-clash continues its strong classical showing with Radu Lupu and Lang Lang, the Borodin Quartet and Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Equally attractive is the chance to hear a lively ethnic and folkloric music programme. www.iksv.org/english/Leipzig, Germany, 11-20 JuneThe 85th annual Bach Festival in his home town also features his two great champions Brahms and Schumann. The Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Ballet get involved in ballet to Bach by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, Philippe Read more ...
stephen.walsh
In general, I’m no particular fan of composers talking in public about their own music. My family suggests that this is because I’m hoping to get the job of talking about it myself. But the real reason is that, on the whole, composers don’t tell the truth about their work – and indeed why should they? Creative work is a mysterious and impenetrable process, and it’s a very modern, right-to-know sort of assumption that those who do it should also be able to explain it. Probably nobody is. But people naturally suppose that when the horse opens its mouth, the oracle will speak. I would say, on Read more ...
kate.connolly
At a sprawling car plant in the suburbs of north-eastern Istanbul mechanics are busy repairing camshafts and dynamos, applying blow torches to the undercarriages of a range of luxury cars and retouching paintwork. Visitors to the building are met by signs reading: “Sheer Driving Pleasure” and “Check Your Engine”. Upstairs, away from the mechanical buzz, fine-tuning of a completely different kind is going on as the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra is taken through its paces by its vivacious Austrian conductor, Sasha Goetzel.The heat is on for the Borusan Phil, which practises in the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Ian Bostridge is one of those artists – Andreas Scholl is another – whose technique is so suited to the recording studio, his recordings so ubiquitously loved and lived-with, that the opportunity to see him perform live has become one of conflict. Suffering from the same malaise as successful pop artists, concert performances inevitably become processed by over-exposed ears as acts of mimicry; studied verisimilitude to a recorded original jostles for validity alongside live creative re-imagining.Last night’s performance of Schubert’s late songs – the programme released on CD by Bostridge Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Rossini provided the lively curtain-raisers to both halves of this Chamber Orchestra of Europe concert, streamed live to Aberdeen where Shell, the sponsors, have something of a vested interest in keeping their employees entertained. The liquid gold on this occasion was of the legato variety and not one but two Fischers ensured that it flowed freely and purposefully. Ivan Fischer is quite simply one of the most perceptive and persuasive conductors on the planet; Julia Fischer (no relation) is the epitome of German cool and precision. She plays the violin rather well, too. But first, The Read more ...
stephen.walsh
To launch a music festival with the Arditti Quartet, as Bath has just almost done (a pair of dance events preceded them), is a bold enough gesture, if no bolder than for the Arditti to open up their Assembly Rooms concert with Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge – a finisher if ever there was one. But for this particular group, late Beethoven might well seem like a kind of starting point. Beethoven was the first to write unplayable music for string quartet; and the Arditti have always specialised in the unplayable. Beethoven thrived on making life hard for his players; he apparently believed that Read more ...
edward.seckerson
We might have expected that the rising young bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee would include “Ah! Mes amis… Pour mon âme” from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment (that’s the number with the nine top Cs) in his Rosenblatt recital at St John’s, Smith Square – but what we might not have anticipated, after so taxing a programme as this, was that he would sing it again. That’s 18 top Cs (and the rest), which isn’t just cheeky, it’s a message: start looking over your shoulder, Juan Diego Florez - Brownlee’s breathing down your neck.The extraordinary thing about the young African-American’s voice is Read more ...