Classical music
kate.connolly
Over four days I've gorged on some world-class music. If you take a pretty city in the full swing of spring, add a dose of Southern US hospitality, some exquisite venues, and a music promoter able to garner the cream of musical talent from across the genres, you have arguably found the perfect ingredients for a top-class musical extravaganza - and a wonderfully restorative experience for a music-lover ready for anything.The Savannah Music Festival (SMF) in the port city of Savannah, Georgia, which is now into its second week and has a week to run, has all that and more. It boasts a proud line Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
If all orchestras inspire a sense of loyalty to some degree, then the Philharmonia perhaps does it better than most. Mackerras is still performing with them, 54 years after he first conducted the orchestra; so is Maazel, who has clocked up 41 years, on and off. There’s Ashkenazy and Dohnányi. And then of course there’s Riccardo Muti, who appears to have been given the unofficial title of conductor-in-chief of anniversaries.He was there in 2007 to celebrate his own 35th anniversary with the Philharmonia; he was there in 2005 for the diamond jubilee; and he was there again last night for their Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This week's musicians birthdays include the genius/lecherous mediocrity (according to taste) Serge Gainsbourg, singing a duet with Brigitte Bardot, classic early 60s footage of Marvin Gaye, vibraphone maestro Red Norvo, Herb Alpert in a rodeo video doing “Casino Royale”, and Astrud Gilberto from Ipanema. Composer birthdays of the week are Franz Joseph Haydn and William Walton. Videos below.2 April 1928: French maverick Serge Gainsbourg, here singing a duet with Brigitte Bardot of “Bonnie and Clyde”. 2 April 1939: Marvin Gaye, with an early TV appearance singing the sublime “Can I Get Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It’s a very assured - not to say very brave - young conductor who chooses to make his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’ notoriously challenging Seventh Symphony. Mighty talents have fallen at this particular fence, defeated by the work’s circuitous evolution and elusive logic. Robin Ticciati has no fear, though, and more importantly has been mentored by a man who knows the Sibelian psyche and terrain better than most – Sir Colin Davis. Could this be his heir apparent?Opening with rather rarer but more instantly accessible Sibelius – the orchestral suite of incidental music Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It’s tempting to say that if Martin Fröst didn’t play the clarinet then he’d be an actor or a dancer. But he is an actor and a dancer and at one point during this scintillating recital he even sang, too – whilst playing the clarinet at the same time, of course. That’s a given. It’s an extension of his lissom body, and in his shiny grey silk suit and untucked shirt he looked decidedly feline. Ever heard a clarinet purr? Ever heard it yowl, scamper, hiss, scratch? Has anyone ever pulled so many colours from the old liquorice stick?His programme with pianist Roland Pöntinen – adhering to Fröst Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
Concert programming can become a little bit predictable, don’t you think? If we’re honest, there are quite a lot of standard programmes bouncing around our halls at the moment. Don’t get me wrong; I understand that putting together an original and enticing programme isn’t easy. There are problems by the bucketload: what to pair with a big symphony, other than another big symphony; what to partner with a radical contemporary piece, other than Bach or something medieval; what to put before Rach 2 at a Proms concert, other than 50 minutes of Xenakis; how to make a concert of bleeding chunks Read more ...
simon.broughton
When I was asked 12 months ago by the BBC if I’d be interested in making a film on Henryk Górecki (in Poland) and Arvo Pärt (in Estonia) for their Sacred Music series, I said yes, almost immediately. I’d been very impressed by the first series and liked the idea pairing of two composers writing religious music in the communist Eastern Bloc who have become almost cult figures in our secular age. Górecki became the fastest-selling living classical composer when Nonesuch’s recording of his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw, was championed by the just-launched Read more ...
peter.quinn
My first encounter with Arvo Pärt’s music is indelibly etched on my consciousness. My piano teacher – the late Susan Bradshaw – placed a piece in front of me which, from a visual point of view alone, was immediately intriguing. Consisting of just two pages, what was most striking about the music was its utter simplicity: there was no time signature; no changes of tempo, key or dynamics; no textural variation. Playing through this quiet piano miniature I was dumbstruck by its crystalline beauty. The piece was Pärt’s Für Alina. I was hooked.This was 25 years ago when I was an Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Who's the greatest living British exponent of the late Romantic repertoire? Many would say Edinburgh-born conductor Donald Runnicles (b. 1954). Runnicles has spent the last 30 years quietly forging a formidable name for himself abroad, first, as a repetiteur in Mannheim, then as an assistant to Sir Georg Solti at Bayreuth, as guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera and, for the past two decades, musical director of San Francisco Opera. In 2007 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra announced that Runnicles would return home to become their new chief conductor. This week he performs Strauss, Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month’s reviews have a heavy late-romantic bias: chamber music by Dvořák, fascinating and idiosyncratic Mahler from Bernstein and Tennstedt, and some superb recordings of Bruckner, Sibelius and Rachmaninov (or Rachmaninoff, as Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra prefer to call him). The more offbeat items include an eclectic piano recital, two quirky ballet scores from the Soviet Union and contemporary orchestral music from France inspired by the cosmos. As usual, click on the links to purchase these items on Amazon.
Mahler: Symphony No 2 ‘Resurrection’, London Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Jonathan Mills has announced the programme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010, on a theme of modern culture in the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia. Ranging from California to Canberra, New York to New Zealand, from Santiago to Samoa, the festival opens on Friday 13 August with John Adams' oratorio El Niño and closes on Sunday 5 September with the traditional fireworks concert.World premieres include political writer Alistair Beaton’s exploration of Scotland’s futile attempt at establishing a colony in Panama, Caledonia, directed by Anthony Neilson and co-produced by the Read more ...
David Nice
This is what Chopin anniversary year ought to be all about; not some celebrity showcase of plums and cornerstones in too large a hall before a restless audience, but a thoughtfully planned adventure zigzagging through the complete works on which the listener feels privileged to eavesdrop, and where the chameleonic genius of the composer always comes first. This eighth concert in the enterprising Kings Place "Chopin Unwrapped" series was the first I've been able to catch, and I realised what I'd been missing. Both of Cypriot pianist Martino Tirimo's two halves offered a demanding but Read more ...