19th century
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé are back in the Bridgewater Hall for the first programme in the second tranche of the orchestra’s digital Winter Season – filming that had to be postponed from its original planned date but is triumphantly achieved now. As before, the full orchestra is accommodated with a monster extension of the platform to allow for adequate distancing. It’s a full-length, three-course concert, too – extraordinary value for money if you consider all the filmic extras provided on top of the excellent musical performances.The lighting this time is subdued, with a lot of background Read more ...
Robert Beale
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most performances just now, was in an empty hall, with its slightly strange "empty" acoustic affecting the spoken word as the artists introduced their music.Talking to an audience is very much the style of Manchester Collective, though, and artistic director Rakhi Singh does it with natural ease even when she can’t see who she’s talking to. She and the other Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Bavarian State Opera has led the way for live performances and associated broadcasts during the pandemic. Their series of weekly “Montagsstück” events have presented innovative chamber operas, specifically for web streaming. Their next goal is full-size opera with a live audience. That is not possible yet, so instead they are premiering a new production of Weber’s Der Freischütz. Initially it is just for the cameras, but when the doors finally open, it will be ready to go.The production is directed and designed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. He has spent the last 20 years cultivating a reputation as Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
From a distance, the pianist Christian Blackshaw bears an uncanny resemblance to Franz Liszt, silver hair swept back à la 19th century. At the piano, though, you could scarcely find two more different musicians. There seems not to be a flamboyant bone in Blackshaw’s body. His playing of the Mozart piano sonatas at the Wigmore Hall over the past few years has been matchlessly gorgeous, pure as the driven snow, and in yesterday’s short but intense programme of Mozart and Schubert, the solitary pianist’s performance spoke direct to his locked-down listeners, screen to screen, with playing Read more ...
David Nice
“Without a care” (Ohne Sorgen, the title of a fast polka by Josef Strauss performed here with deadpan sung laughs from the players) was never going to be the motto of a Vienna Philharmonic concert without an audience. Introspection and even sadness seemed frequent companions in the interesting New Year’s Day bill of fare. Switching on BBC Radio 3 yesterday morning without prior knowledge of works or conductor, what I heard – one of nine unfamiliar items on the programme – were dark-hued, oaky waltz strains, clearly under the sway of a master. This was Johann Strauss the Younger’s Schallwellen Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
At first glance you might mistake Bridgerton (Netflix) for the latest effusion from the pen of Lord Fellowes, since it conforms so closely to the Fellowesian pattern of manners, money and mores among the English aristocracy. Even the title sounds like a mashup of Downton and Belgravia.But no. The show is based on the historical romances of American novelist Julia Quinn, and has been masterminded by producer Shonda Rhimes, of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal fame. Much of the pre-publicity has focused on Bridgerton’s so-called colour-blind casting, though that isn’t quite an accurate description. Read more ...
stephen.walsh
List all the problems that the pandemic places in the way of operatic performance, and you might well end up wondering why anyone would bother. Opera Ensemble, however, have bothered, in the shape of an accomplished and moving production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, stripped down in a variety of ways, deprived of its normal house-mate, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, and accompanied by a band in various degrees of shrinkage: a piano trio when the production opened at St.James’s Church, Islington, in October, and for a couple of performances at the Grange Festival earlier this month, nothing Read more ...
Robert Beale
Adaptability is the name of the game for big companies in the music business now. And Opera North’s streamed presentation of Beethoven's Fidelio from inside Leeds Town Hall is a prime example of just how adaptable things need to be.The orchestra is down to 33: single (hardworking!) woodwind, two horns, two trumpets, no trombones, in a score reduction by Francis Griffin. The chorus numbers 24, and between them that’s going some for a socially distanced ensemble these days. The soloists are spread along the front of the extended platform, with space to act and interact to some degree. Lighting Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Hallé have been slow off the mark, compared with some, in their response to the challenge of concert-giving in the Covid era. But now that they have delivered on the first of their winter season performances, it has clearly been worth the wait. They are offering not merely online musical performances but a set of newly made, highly creative films, watchable on Vimeo, built around the works they’re playing and the sight and sound of them doing so. Not less than a "live" performance, but quite a lot more.In "normal" times, you wouldn’t get as close to musicians in full flow as you do in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
On the face of it, this new Sky Atlantic series sounded as though it might be a grave and sombre slice of American history, telling the story of the anti-slavery crusader John Brown and how his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia helped push America into the Civil War. Instead, it’s a riotous ride through a primitive America whose identity is still in the process of being formed, led by an outsized performance from Ethan Hawke as Brown.Though the story (based on James McBride’s 2013 novel) is rooted in factual events, this looks nothing like a history lesson, and you just have to sit back and let Read more ...
Richard Bratby
“This year was supposed to be so very different” said Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when he spoke to theartsdesk earlier this year. Talk about an understatement. The CBSO has hardly been alone in having cherished plans wrecked. But in the orchestra’s centenary year, the sudden cancellation of a programme of celebrations that had taken the best part of a decade to plan felt like a particularly cruel blow. And having finally pieced together a skeletal replacement season (the CBSO’s main venue, Symphony Hall, was able to re-open its doors only Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In a bold first strike – straight to the gut, surely, for many in the audience – the Wigmore Hall’s “Proust Night” began with an old recording of the Berceuse from Fauré’s Dolly Suite. Clever. How apt that the signature tune from Listen With Mother (a beloved old BBC radio show of stories for younger children) should have been composed by a friend – and idol – of the writer whose own rapt entanglement in the mother-child bond threads through his life and work. Memory, elegy, nostalgia, lost bliss, solace beyond pain, the quest to recapture in art whatever time has snatched from Read more ...