Debussy
Robert Beale
Every 21st birthday deserves a party, and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester celebrated the anniversary of its opening with a weekend of fun and "access" events, ending with a recital by four pianists on its four Steinway pianos – playing them all at once, in eight-hand arrangements.It was very different from the opening 21 years ago, when orchestras dominated the programmes. This time even Manchester Camerata, the chamber orchestra with which the hall co-promotes events, moved round the corner to play in the gallery at HOME, a newer arts centre. But one of the early discoveries about this Read more ...
graham.rickson
Dreams & Fancies – English music for solo guitar Sean Shibe (guitar) (Delphian)This is the best solo guitar disc I've heard. That it comes from a soloist in his twenties makes it all the more astounding. There's a funny quote in Lucy Walker’s sleeve note from the influential Spanish guitarist Francisco Tárrega, who remarked that “the guitar in the hands of an Englishman is almost blasphemy.” Not any more; the British guitarist Julian Bream emerged from nowhere to become one of the 20th century's most important players, and one who inspired a huge range of contemporary composers to write Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall. They are known as new music specialists – the group was founded by Pierre Boulez as the house band for the IRCAM electronic music studio – so Ravel and Debussy are early music for them. In fact, those venerable names were included to give context to more recent French and Italian compositions. Leading mid-century modernists were also included – Messiaen, Maderna and Berio – but the real substance was provided by two living composers, Philippe Schoeller and Matteo Franceschini, both offering Read more ...
stephen.walsh
A drama of passion for essentially passive characters, Debussy’s one and only completed opera is a masterpiece of paradox. How do you stage a work whose dramatis personae hardly seem aware of their own destructive feelings, and who inhabit their island world like the blind who, according to Pelléas, used to visit the curative fountain but stopped doing so when the king himself went blind?Michael Boyd, in his beautiful but occasionally frustrating production for Garsington Opera, approaches - if he doesn’t wholly solve – this problem by treating each of the 15 scenes as a kind of static Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antheil: Symphonies 4 and 5, Over the Plains BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)American composer George Antheil boastfully described himself as the early 20th century’s "bad boy of music", though a few hours sent in the company of this disc might lead you to wonder quite what all the fuss was about. Perhaps Antheil just had the knack of being in the right place at the right time: his Ballet mécanique, featuring multiple keyboards and an aeroplane propellor, caused a short-lived scandal in Paris in 1926. Antheil returned to the US in the early 1930s, settling in Hollywood in 1936 Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
François-Xavier Roth is a distinctive presence at the podium. He is short and immaculately attired, and first appearances could lead you to expect a civilised and uneventful evening. But the facade soon drops. His movements are brisk and erratic, as he conducts without a baton and instead shakes his outstretched hands at the players. He often leaps into the air, landing in a fierce pose directed at one of the players, before returning to his repertoire of small, indistinct gestures.Yet the results are impressively detailed and precise. Rhythmic clarity is a hallmark of his interpretations, Read more ...
David Nice
Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when we have Debussy's two books of Préludes? In the hands, that is, of a pianist magician who holds the key to this wild parade, demi-real wonderland, call it what you will. I've only heard two wizards equal to the whole sequence: on disc, Krystian Zimerman, graced by a wide recorded range the old masters could never command, and now, in the concert hall, Alexander Melnikov. Between them, they prove that Debussy can be not only ravishingly remote, but violent, too, and scary as hell.Debussy's curiosity spans thousands of years, from ancient Egyptian funerary Read more ...
David Nice
Treasure our young continental European musicians in London while you can. Only last week I learned that so many of the overseas students at London's Guildhall School had stories to tell about being questioned in public (usually "are you Polish?" with the negative ramifications that implied). Certainly that was true for the Estonians, two of whom celebrated their country's 99th birthday as a republic yesterday lunchtime - the big day is on Friday; expect much more in centenary year - with assistance from their London embassy and the City Music Society. Both sponsors must have been very proud Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two young guys called Ben graced the BBC Philharmonic platform at the Bridgewater Hall – looking almost like Ant and Dec if you let your imagination wander. Ben Gernon, 27, had just been announced as the orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor (while predecessor John Storgårds now rejoices in the title of Chief Guest Conductor … it almost seems a bout of alternative facts is coming on), and this was his Bridgewater Hall début. Piano concerto soloist was Benjamin Grosvenor, a virtuoso Manchester knows well.Stickless throughout, Gernon began with Beethoven’s Third ("Eroica") Symphony, played Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Images, Jeux, La plus que lente San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas (SFS Media)Debussy’s tennis-themed Jeux would surely have made a bigger splash had its 1913 premiere not been overshadowed by a certain Stravinsky premiere. This is a real grower of a piece, a tennis-themed ballet given music of supernatural delicacy and subtlety. Jeux is an otherworldly score, one of its mysteries being that it can sound like a new piece on each hearing. I’ve never heard the piece so well performed as it is here, Debussy’s shades and half-lights painted with incredible skill by Michael Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s just a short trip down the A1 from Edinburgh. But East Lothian – with its big skies, wide-open spaces, empty beaches and seemingly inexhaustable supply of quaint, historic villages – feels like a long, long way from the Scottish capital. Especially from the heaving, hectic Edinburgh of the August festivals season – which East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival follows by just a couple of weeks, managing to maintain the momentum of artistic endeavour, but also providing a far more reflective, considered antidote.The East Lothian festival takes its name from the surprisingly wild Lammermuir Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Vladimir Jurowski began his latest season as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic with a typically bold and adventurous programme. At its core were the two Szymanowski violin concertos performed by Nicola Benedetti, and these were framed by Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite. The two concertos are stylistically distinct, the First impressionistic, the Second folk-influenced, so the pairings were apt. As ever, Jurowski delivered supple, well-crafted performances, and Benedetti shone, but the Read more ...