Barbican
Gavin Dixon
Jukka-Pekka Saraste doesn’t visit London much these days. He was Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and there were rumours that he was in line for the top job. That didn’t happen, and his career soon took him elsewhere – which was a great shame if last night's evening’s Shostakovich was anything to go by.Saraste is an enigmatic figure, relaxed on the podium and undemonstrative. His interpretations can lack punch, especially when compared to some of his more dynamic contemporaries, but he has a real feeling for mood, and for subtly developing the music’s perspective over Read more ...
David Nice
Not long after noon on Sunday, strange bells began ringing. In just 11 bars, Bach summons pairs of flutes, oboes and violas da gamba against pizzicato strings and continuo to tintinnabulate against the alto's recitative lines about a "vibrating clang" to "pierce our marrows and our veins". These hallucinatory sounds and harmonies could have been composed yesterday. Instead they're at the service of a 1727 lamentation mourning the death of a princess.That you can find such moments of sheer astonishment in just about every Bach cantata - there is another towards the end of "Laß, Fürstin, laß Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
#Beethoven250 is in full swing at the Barbican. Like most venues, they are keen to show a different side to the composer in his jubilee year. And the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives ticks all sorts of anniversary boxes. The work is utterly obscure - not a single one of the musicians this evening had performed it before - but it’s large-scale and ambitious, with plenty of opportunities to shine, especially for the chorus and soloists. It was paired with Berg’s Violin Concerto, played by Lisa Batiashvili, an equally virtuosic performance, though of a more subdued work. An ideal balance. Read more ...
David Nice
Why go to hear a cello-and-piano recital in a large hall, and a rather unsatisfying programme (delayed without explanation for 15 minutes, incidentally) spotlighting a transcription of a work which was created for the violin? Two good answers would be Gautier Capuçon and Yuja Wang, sophisticated artists right at the top their respective leagues, communicative in a way that can reach out, tone-wise, into big spaces or pull you in to another, magical world.Capuçon the cellist didn't solve all problems in Jules Delsart's arrangement of Franck's A major Violin Sonata - a work ideally played by Read more ...
Sergey Smbatyan
We’re touring across Europe in January 2020, visiting five countries to perform eight concerts with the world-class violinist Maxim Vengerov as our leading soloist. The tour has been organized by the European Foundation for Support of Culture.As Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, I’ve always sought to combine the eastern and western musical traditions together when programming concerts for the orchestra, whilst also presenting new music to audiences.On the European Tour, the ASSO and Vengerov will pair Bruch’s heartfelt First Violin Concerto Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
You can see the temptation. With three different versions and four different overtures to choose from, as well as all that spoken dialogue to cut, substitute or omit, Beethoven’s Fidelio has always been a Choose Your Own Adventure sort of opera – a work, like Hamlet, that we shape and reshape in our own image. With so much agency available, so many fissures and footholds in this troubled piece, perhaps it was inevitable that someone would go all the way, jettison the score entirely and start from scratch.This is exactly what Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang has done. His prisoner of Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Alina Ibragimova’s solo journey (in 2015) through the peaks and abysses of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas gave me vivid Proms memories to treasure for a lifetime. The Russian-born violinist’s Bach abounds in both majesty and tenderness, as well as a consuming fire of intensity when the music so demands. She brought something of the same quality to her performance last night of Mendelssohn’s E minor concerto at the Barbican. Nathalie Stutzmann conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a menu of well-seasoned 19th-century favourites that began with generous chunks of Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Read more ...
David Nice
The devil wore all manner of outlandish attire in last night's chameleonic programme devised by Peter Ash, the London Schools Symphony Orchestra's challenging artistic director. There was searing verse from Marlowe, Milton and Goethe; music from Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Liszt to Penderecki and Schnittke featuring waltzes, marches, a galop and a Hammer-horror tango; and performers aged from 13 to 80.Holding it all magnificently together were the encouraging, unfussy guidance of master orchestral and conducting trainer Sian Edwards and the supreme authority of Janet Suzman, viscerally exciting Read more ...
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Martín, Barbican review - songs of protest and resilience
David Nice
In youth we trust. That can be the only motto worth anything for 2020, as the world goes into further meltdown.So it was startling, stunning and cathartic, two days after the big downer of 3 January – the American horror clown seemingly in competition with the Australian apocalypse – to witness 164 teenagers under a conductor they clearly adore, Jaime Martín, making their voices heard, sometimes literally, in 20th century music of fear, anxiety, protest, violence and just a smidgen of hope.Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, short though it is in time-span, has long been overlooked as one of the Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Notable anniversaries provided the ballast for this year’s raft of exhibitions; none was dead weight, though, with shows dedicated to Rembrandt, Leonardo and Ruskin among the most original and exhilarating of 2019’s offerings. Happily, a number of our favourites are still running, and there’s a month left to see Rembrandt’s Light at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The show skilfully eschews gimmickry in order to explore Rembrandt’s expert manipulation of light to aid storytelling and evoke nuances of mood and atmosphere (pictured below: Rembrandt, The Denial of St Peter, 1660). Rembrandt was an Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The Barbican, a week before Christmas, and it’s British folk-rock legends Steeleye Span’s last gig of the year, a year in which its vigorous seven-strong line-up – featuring a new recruit in the shape of former Bellowheader Benji Kirkpatrick – celebrated a half century of Span by releasing a strong new album in Est’d 69. One of the highlights of that new set was blockbuster ballad “Old Matron”, featuring Tull's Ian Anderson on flute.No Anderson tonight, but it nevertheless came with some very special guests too – Martin Carthy, coming to the stage with the mighty fiddler Peter Knight and Read more ...
David Nice
What a jolting coincidence that one of the 20th century's angriest symphonic beasts should have a rare unleashing on a night of high national anxiety. Whether Vaughan Williams spewed forth his Fourth Symphony in response to darkening European clouds in 1934 or as a sublimation of sexual frustration, given his unhappy domestic life at the time, it hit us all hard last night. There was even some release of tension in the sheer energy of embattled themes and grinding dissonances, thanks to Antonio Pappano's stupendous control of a London Symphony Orchestra on fire.Most surprising, perhaps, was Read more ...