Philharmonia
geoff brown
Looking at John Wilson conduct, it’s possible to think that you’re watching an incarnation of that Proms favourite of decades past, Sir Malcolm Sargent. The immaculate tailcoat, shining white cuffs, the florid gestures with a baton as long as a magic wand: the only missing visual ingredient is Sargent’s self-regarding air. On Sunday afternoon at the Festival Hall, Wilson, Britain’s golden maestro of light music, garnished the impression by venturing into some of Sargent’s own territory with The Yeomen of the Guard: the only quasi-serious piece among Gilbert and Sullivan’s corpus, and the only Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
In this, the work’s 50th anniversary year, there will be a lot of War Requiems. Benjamin Britten’s howl of Pacifist conviction has lost little of its poignancy since its composition – a period marked by the almost continuous military presence of British forces abroad. With action in Afghanistan coming to a close and political stirrings animating the Falklands issue once again, this plaintive reminder of “truth untold”, of the “pity of war” still speaks loudly and directly. In the workmanlike hands of Maazel and the Philharmonia Chorus, heavenly trumpets blare and military glory is neatly Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Sometimes the most disturbing images exist only in our imaginations - and so the questions posed in the preface to Bartók’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle become especially pertinent: “Where did this happen - outside or within? Where is the stage - outside or within?” The answers, surely, lie “within”, making the prospect of a “semi-staged” climax to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Philharmonia Bartók series, Infernal Dance, a potentially troubling one.There was a “set” - a grey-walled shell and a pendulous shard-like mobile whose mere presence had one fearing the worst. And so the first Read more ...
David Nice
It was bound, in vocal terms, to be a case of Beauty and the Beast. Stefan Vinke, though useful for killer heroic-tenor parts like this one in Mahler’s Song of the Earth, has made some of the ugliest sounds I’ve heard over the past few seasons, ineffable mezzo Alice Coote many of the loveliest, and with great communication, too. The wild card was fitfully engaged old-master conductor Lorin Maazel: would he stop dragging the Philharmonia behemoth-like behind him and let it be the bird of paradise Coote needed to share her deepest meditations?At first, that seemed unlikely. Maazel (pictured Read more ...
ash.smyth
A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works. Throughout his career he has worked regularly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where in 2008 he created the title role in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.At his home in Sussex, Sir John talks to theartsdesk - in booming Lancashire tones - about getting into Wagner, the importance of a good beard, Read more ...
ash.smyth
Next week Sir John Tomlinson (b 1946), renowned mega-bass and routine frequenter of the Covent Garden stage, appears in concert at the Windsor Festival. It is a picturesque halt on a career that sees him circling the world's greatest opera houses in the most epic roles in opera. As is typical of this far from typical singer, the concert is huge in its range, encompassing Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, its lyrical portrayals ranging from servants to gods, from priests to cobblers, human conditions of every shade from ruthless to kind.In the first of two interview features this weekend – and fresh Read more ...
philip radcliffe
However, to begin at the beginning – the First Symphony in D major, first performed in 1889 in Budapest, with the composer conducting. There’s a lot to be said for giving Manchester its scoop (naturally, we don’t regard it as a dress rehearsal for the Royal Festival Hall performance tonight). In any case, Manchester had its big Mahler feast last year, when the Halle and the BBC Philharmonic joined forces to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Birth, death, any excuse for more Mahler. Yet Manchester audiences are clearly not satiated, judging by the turn out last night and the Read more ...
David Nice
Imagine a special two-hour-plus resurrection of that wannabe extravaganza Stars in Their Eyes. "So, young maestro André de Ridder, who are you going to give us?" "Well, in addition to showing my special flair for contemporary music in Ligeti, I'm going to be Herbert von Karajan conducting On the Beautiful Blue Danube to a ballet of spacecraft." With another rigorously calibrated turn of the screw, it can only be the unique counterpoint of music, sounds, speech and silence with vision that is Stanley Kubrick's 2001.Let me try and explain what I mean by de Ridder "being" Karajan. I'd completely Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The heroics came fast and fervently with Andris Nelsons and the Philharmonia Orchestra emerging from suffocating pianissimi to rip out the exultant fanfares of Beethoven’s Leonora No 3 Overture as if already limbering up to take on Strauss’s critics in Ein Heldenleben. That he saw them off so decisively didn’t, on his present form, come as much of a surprise. Nelsons doesn’t need anyone to fight his battles for him – not even the egotistical Strauss.This was an evening of much trumpeting, offstage and on. Indeed when Håkan Hardenberger came on to play the familiar Haydn Concerto it was as if Read more ...
David Nice
In the last year of his life he was, as a colleague noted when we learned of Charles Mackerras’s death, the wise old gamekeeper in the spring forest of Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen. No wonder Mackerras, we were told last night by his conductor nephew Alexander Briger, wanted that most ecstatic celebration of the natural order for his memorial, just as Janáček had had it played at his funeral. Was it trivialised by an encore number from Mackerras’s deliciously arranged Sullivan potpourri-ballet, Pineapple Poll? Not a jot, mate.He gave his final unforgettable concerts with the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
From Russian “avant-garde constructivism” to Estonian minimalism via a jazz-inspired French concerto and the defiant originality of Scriabin – last night’s Prom from Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra had a lot of ground to cover. I can imagine few pieces more antithetical – in spirit as much as style – as the self-reflexive indulgence of Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy and Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No 4 with its meditative asceticism; it says much of Salonen’s persuasive energy that it was a dialogue rather than a squabble that ensued amongst this rag-bag of the 20th and 21st Read more ...
David Nice
Why, a modish reader might ask, did I go to hear a rum-looking cove conducting a classical lollipop at the Festival Hall when I might have tasted the latest fruits of a controversial prodigy over at the Barbican? First, because there's plenty of time to wait and see whether bumptious wunderkind Alex Prior will get beyond the derivative, lurid monsterworks he's currently producing. Second, because the immensely likeable cove, French-born Stéphane Denève, is so busy transfiguring his Royal Scottish National Orchestra that we Londoners all too rarely get to see him. And last, because you can't Read more ...