Bruckner
Gavin Dixon
Daniel Barenboim is as distinctive as he is unpredictable. His considerable strengths – dynamism, passion, keen intellectual engagement – are balanced by some notable weaknesses – clunky tempo changes, lack of detail – but all configure differently in each performance. This Prom was a success largely for the fresh perspectives he brought to Mozart and Bruckner, both composers prone to stiffness and formality from less adventurous performers.If the Mozart was the less successful, it was because Barenboim seemed to take his ideas too far, always working just outside the bounds of classical Read more ...
David Nice
There is no reason why young musicians shouldn't make something special out of mature thoughts on mortality. Nor is the Albert Hall problematic when it comes to haloing intimate Bach as finely as it does massive Bruckner. The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra glowed in both the large scale and the small last night. Any shortcomings were in senior hands and hearts - possibly those of a usually great conductor, Philippe Jordan, more likely the infirm purpose of his composer, Bruckner. The most surprising disappointment of all came from that most prized of baritones, Christian Gerhaher.First, though Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Mass No. 3 in F minor Soloists, Bavarian Radio Choir, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Robin Ticciati (Tudor)Good Bruckner recordings aren’t just the preserve of elderly conductors. Robin Ticciati’s version of the youthful F minor Mass is both musically satisfying and emotionally involving: his non-interventionalist approach reaping huge dividends. He’s helped by the performers: the Bamberg players’ burnished warmth irresistible alongside supple, rich singing from the Bavarian Radio Choir. Their dynamic control is glorious – sample the “Gloria”’s full-throated opening, the choir’s tone Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Laid low by a bug, Daniel Harding had to withdraw at the last minute from conducting the LSO last night. Booked as the soloist, Leif Ove Andsnes stepped into the breach to lead Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 from the piano, as the composer would have done. His unruffled keyboard technique and unimpeachably neat phrasing betrayed no sign of hasty preparation. Unfortunately they also barely scratched beneath the surface of a dark and troubled work that grabbed Romantic imaginations at a time when so much other Mozart was brushed off as Rococo plasterwork.No 20 shares its key of D minor with Don Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
It’s always fun to watch the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. As members of a self-governing orchestra, and often soloists in their own right, the players like to do things their way. Come the ripe second theme of the Bruckner Adagio and the cellos were giving it lashings of vibrato; muesli-wearing adherents to pure tone be damned. So were six of the eight basses ranged across the back of the Royal Festival Hall stage. That just left two basses, left-hand fingers resolutely unmoved. They weren’t going to vibrate for Bruckner, for Sir Simon Rattle or for anybody.There are many positive Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Last and most imposing of Bruckner’s completed symphonies, the Eighth invites and frequently receives architectural comparisons. Such talk of pillars and cathedrals could only be wide of the mark in the wake of this unconventional, beautifully prepared and deeply humane performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor designate, Sir Simon Rattle.Over a span of 80-plus minutes, Bruckner transforms a double-dotted, death-watch tattoo in C minor into unanswerably emphatic C major. As ever, the destination is less important than the journey. The tempi were flexible, so Read more ...
David Nice
Risk-taking is what gives so many of Vladimir Jurowski's concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra their special savour. But did two risks for last night's programme pay off? I was as excited as many Russians and hardcore Russophiles at the rare visit of legendary 73-year-old cellist Natalia Gutman, and it could only be interesting to hear the little-heard, hour-long first version of Bruckner's Third Symphony. But interesting, with a few flashes of inspiration, was as far as it went in both cases.Gutman's recording of the two Shostakovich Cello Concertos is up there with the Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Imagine knowing Hamlet as a four-act play, or The Ambassadors without its bottom third. Imagine Mozart’s Requiem as a torso that halts eight bars into the Lacrymosa, or Mahler’s Tenth as the lone Adagio (as, indeed it too often appears). We might admire them all the more for what we ached to feel whole as their creators intended.So it is with Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, hitherto almost universally known as a three-movement torso. Almost four years ago the Berliner Philharmoniker played and recorded the final version of the most convincing of many attempts over the years to complete the Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Nobody knows de trouble I see is a popular concerto, but it’s an unlikely hit. Zimmermann maintains a distanced relationship with the spiritual on which the work is based, and, while there are jazz elements too, this is a long way from crossover. Zimmermann maintains his modernist/serialist perspective throughout, and all the jazz ideas – the trombone glissandos, the sax section replacing the French horns, the vaguely improvisatory trumpet writing – are configured within a strict and austere single-movement structure.Fortunately, both trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Stanisław Skrowaczewski has become a legend in his own, considerable, lifetime. From the ecstatic ovation as he took the stage, it seemed many were here just to see this iconic figure in the flesh. Fortunately, the performance of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony that followed fully justified the reception. The interpretation was vibrant and intuitive, with tempo and dynamic decisions seemingly coming from inside the music itself. A few imprecise textural details suggested that age is finally (at 92!) catching up with the great man, but those didn’t matter a bit. This was classic Skrowaczewski.These Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Conductor Robin Ticciati and pianist Javier Perianes are an odd couple. Ticciati is forthright and disciplined, while Perianes is reticent but erratic. But they demonstrated last night that Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto can accommodate those extremes, and even draw on the resulting tensions.Ticciati brought a decidedly Classical approach to Beethoven’s score. Phrases were carefully shaped, and balances finely judged. Which isn’t to say that the music-making was mechanical; there was plenty of ebb and flow here, and Ticciati was always keenly aware of the shape and direction each phrase. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Serenades Gewandhausorchester/Riccardo Chailly (Decca)This delectable supplement to Chailly's Leipzig Brahms symphony cycle is predictably good. Brahms's early D minor piano concerto sounds like an attempt to compose on an explicitly symphonic scale, a study in snarling, haughty grandeur, but the two serenades are breezy, transparent and extrovert. All musical elements which play a crucial part in mature Brahms, and ones which Chailly so successfully highlights in the symphonies. Haydn and early Beethoven are audible influences, but these pieces already sound entirely individual Read more ...