Classical music
Classical CDs: Ballades, barcarolles and hammer blowsSaturday, 13 July 2024
Fauré: Complete Music for Solo Piano Lucas Debargue (Sony)In lots of ways I was ready to like this boxset of the complete Fauré music for solo piano, having long seen it as an extraordinary strand of the piano’s literature. But also perhaps I... Read more... |
NMC Recordings at 35, Dutch Church, London review - a fitting celebrationThursday, 04 July 2024
NMC Recordings has spent 35 years promoting contemporary music by British composers, and this commitment to both emerging and established voices was represented at this birthday concert in London last night, part of the Spitalfields Festival. From... Read more... |
Concert Theatre DSCH, Norwegian CO, QEH review - visually stunning, viscerally thrilling ShostakovichMonday, 01 July 2024
This luminously persuasive, radically inventive performance of Shostakovich’s music begins – quite literally – at the end. Beneath a slowly revolving monochrome moon, a lone musician delivers a plangent rendition of the Moderato and Allegretto from... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: violinist and music director Pekka Kuusisto on staged Shostakovich, Sibelius, sound architecture and folk fiddlingMonday, 01 July 2024
Lilac time in Oslo, a mini heatwave in June 2023, a dazzling Sunday morning the day after the darkness transfigured of Concert Theatre DSCH, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra’s from-memory Shostakovich music-drama. Pekka Kuusisto and I decide not to... Read more... |
Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Kenny, Spitalfields Music Festival review - layers behind a sweet Tower hourFriday, 28 June 2024
Behind this poignant, simple-seeming hour of music for soprano and lute(s) lay a spider-web of connections between outsiders in the City: rebels, prisoners, immigrants, Black Londoners. Elizabeth Kenny’s programme note wove it all together... Read more... |
Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St Jude's review - Americana both fun and fierceTuesday, 25 June 2024
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the sweet dream of Florence Price’s Adoration fit that bill. But An American in Paris sounded completely different... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Bare feet, hardback books and giant snailsSaturday, 22 June 2024
Allan Pettersson: Complete Edition Various artists (BIS)That this hefty anthology (17 CDs and 4 DVDs) has been with me for several months shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s encountered the work of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson (1911-1980);... Read more... |
Goldscheider, Royal Orchestral Society, Miller, SJSS review - fine horn playing from the very bestMonday, 17 June 2024
London’s non-professional orchestra sector is an undervalued asset to the city, and deserves more attention. And so last night I went to hear the Royal Orchestral Society, accompanying horn superstar Ben Goldscheider, and it proved a better way to... Read more... |
Bach's Mass in B Minor, Collegium Vocale Gent, Herreweghe, Barbican - masterful subtlety proves more intriguing than compellingSaturday, 15 June 2024
There’s a masterful subtlety to Philippe Herreweghe’s interpretation of Bach’s last great choral work – it shuns blazing transcendence for a sense of serene contemplation that reveals every angle of the mass’s geometrical perfection. Listening to... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival - romantic journeys, cosmic hallucinations and wild stompsWednesday, 12 June 2024
It may be unusual to begin festival coverage with praise of the overseer rather than the artists. Yet Roger Wright, who quietly leaves his post at Britten Pears Arts this July after a momentous decade, is no ordinary Chief Executive. I’ve never... Read more... |
First Person: The Henschel Quartet at 30Tuesday, 11 June 2024
We vividly remember the image of Martin Lovett, the cellist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet, bursting out laughing. He tells his favourite true travel story. After boarding a plane, the Amadeus Quartet has taken its seats and Martin is just... Read more... |
Trpčeski, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - flash and sparkleMonday, 10 June 2024
Edinburgh is lucky to get a lot of high quality musicians coming to perform, not least during the summer festival season, but the most high profile musical visitor to the city this weekend was none other than Taylor Swift. Everyone is talking about... Read more... |
