Classical music
David Nice
If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in recent years have involved Brahms, a composer I love more the older I get: the Second, A major, Piano Quartet, much less often heard than No. 1, at the 2018 Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, and, last Friday, his First String Quartet from the Cuarteto Casals, also new to me, in an airy room looking out on Dublin’s Glasnevin Botanic Gardens.I missed the first two concerts of this year’s DICMF, arriving on the Friday, but both were greeted with Read more ...
Simon Thompson
There was a neat conjunction of commemorations to this concert, the most obvious one being the fact that that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, so it’s completely appropriate the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chose to end its season with a concert of his music. More than that, however, the composer himself heard this very orchestra (then called the Scottish National Orchestra) play his Festive Overture in the Usher Hall in 1962, during one of Lord Harewood’s Edinburgh Festivals. Therefore, there’s a pleasing symmetry to hearing this team playing it Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antal Doráti in London: The Mercury Masters Vol. 1 (Decca Eloquence)A couple of recent YouTube videos show DG engineers hard at work remastering Karajan’s 1970s Bruckner and Mahler recordings for new vinyl LP pressings. The process looks tortuous, the multitracked master tapes painstakingly examined and reassembled, artificial reverb added using an empty stairwell. Listen, say, to Karajan’s Berlin performances of Mahler 6 and Bruckner 8 and you’re struck by the density of sound, the orchestral sonority almost oppressive in loud tuttis. Yes, the playing is accomplished, but there’s a Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a spectrum of pieces which brim with wit and inventiveness. This lunchtime concert with violinist Anthony Marwood was a sheer joy, as they together traversed a range of style and tone, richly entertaining a very decent Bank Holiday crowd in the Wigmore Hall.The starting point was an obvious one: the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. This sequence of three run together had a reassuring familiarity, and a strong whiff of the Parisian café. The swooning violin melody Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
"How long is Wagner’s Ring Cycle?" That’s not the opening to a joke, it’s a genuine question asked by a friend who I’d met up with before heading to Edinburgh’s Usher Hall to hear the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform "Wagner’s Ring Symphony". His question is one I really don’t know how to answer: technically it’s 15 hours, but does a cycle ever really end? Is a piece of string as long as the ties that bind? How long would it take to wrap up the whole world?Fortunately, I didn’t really have to. "They’re not doing the entire thing!" I said. ‘I’d be in that hall until next week! The Read more ...
David Nice
Three live, very alive Symphonie fantastiques in a year may seem a lot. But such is Berlioz’s precise, unique and somehow modern imagination that you can always discover something new, especially given the intense hard work on detail of Antonio Pappano and what is now very much “his” London Symphony Orchestra. They and Lisa Batiashvili also helped to keep Szymanowski’s hothouse First Violin Concerto in focus, too.There can’t be a more exhilarating curtain-up to a concert than Berlioz’s equally fertile Le Corsaire Overture. The whiplash timpani, the unison helter-skelters of strings later meet Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, together with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, and inevitably there was the question: what next?Their next step has been the four horn concertos, and their soloist is the enthusiastic and polished Martin Owen. As with the piano concertos, these are not period performances – everyone plays on modern instruments – but they are historically informed, and the dynamics and sound qualities of a chamber orchestra are often an ear-opener to the nature of the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two established favourites from big names of the 20th century plus a new-to-me piece by a forgotten figure worthy of re-discovery.And the LSO under Susanna Mälkki didn’t disappoint in any regard: this was a great night in the Barbican hall. I came across the black American composer Julia Perry (1924-1979) a few years ago, but this was my first chance to hear her music live. There are a few black and women composers getting performed these days who, I fear, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony)The concert I attended of Brahms Lieder in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in October 2024, with Christian Gerhaher in fabulous voice and Gerold Huber at the peak of his craft was fabulous – five star review of that very special evening here. I was therefore overjoyed to discover only recently that they had made this recording of a very similar programme just one week before. The whole disc is a wonderful outpouring from a gloriously intelligent singer; maybe that’s all it’s necessary to know.The programme is a Read more ...
David Nice
It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet knows them by heart, has bags of charisma and energy, so why not? I could give more than one reason, but the main problem was that while Bavouzet perfectly embodied Scarbo, the monster-Puck of Gaspard de la nuit, and other nocturnal flitters, he seemed careless with Undine and her watery companions, of which there were many.So much felt too loud - does Bavouzet's choice of a Yamaha piano, Richter's favourite, have anything to do with it? - and rushed. No Read more ...
David Nice
William Byrd, Arnold Schoenberg and their respective acolytes go cheek by jowl, crash into one another, soothe, infuriate and shine in their very different ways This is all in a typical programme of pianist, conductor, composer and all-round pioneer Karim Said, and last night in the studio of Leighton House, it nearly all worked (when it didn’t, that was the nature of the beast, not the pianist).Lord Leighton may not have been a great artist – he was a state figure who had a grand funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral in the same year as the much more original William Morris was buried under simple Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in celebration of their 20th anniversary, in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience. The 12-strong group still boasts four founder members, but this was swelled to 10 for the final item, as a swarm of alumni joined in a beautiful rendition of Gibbons’ The Silver Swan.Stile Antico specialises in music of the 16th century, in all its variety – from Byrd to Palestrina – sung with rich-hued warmth in the vocal sound, animation and vigour in the rhythms Read more ...