Bach
alexandra.coghlan
The BBC Proms is the largest classical music festival in the world – an event whose ambition, accessibility and breadth wouldn’t be possible without the Royal Albert Hall and its capacity of well over 5,000 people. But the building that makes this festival possible, that provides the space for the hundreds of Prommers who fill the arena each evening, is also its biggest curse. Its unwieldy, awkward acoustic is a problem that must be faced and resolved every night, and when it comes to Early Music, it’s a resolution that’s partial at best. This B Minor Mass from Les Arts Florissants was no 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
Bach: Keyboard Concertos Andrea Bacchetti/Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (Sony)My only niggle with this invigorating set is that we don’t get all seven of Bach’s keyboard concertos. Having six is splendid, but there’s bags of spare space on the second disc for more music, even if the missing No. 6 is a transcription of one of the Brandenburgs. That said, these are supremely enjoyable performances. Andrea Bacchetti has an ear for the bigger picture. Bach’s elaborate noodlings can sound laborious in some hands, but Bacchetti’s lightness is a thing to treasure. You can always hear the Read more ...
David Kettle
It should have been a complete disaster. Not announcing your festival’s programme until barely a week before it started ought to have guaranteed that nobody knew about it – no press, no audiences, other plans made, other things booked.But still they came. It’s testament to the Cottier Chamber Project’s now firmly established place in Scotland’s summer musical life – this is its sixth year – that even keeping audiences in the dark as to what was planned didn’t deter them.That bizarre delay was down to questions over two major funders, artistic director Andy Saunders has explained. And it can’t Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Crazy-faced space-hopper, playmobil fireman, marble run: toys from my own childhood, staring at me now from out of glass cases, alongside an 18th century marionette, thread-bare rocking horses and a headless Georgian doll. This concert in the Museum of Childhood could have been a wallow in nostalgia. Instead, with their usual brand of ingenuity, the Multi-Story Orchestra kindled musical artefacts into vibrant life.It began with the trembling bow of Sally Pendlebury’s cello, open fifths sounding almost painfully vulnerable in the museum’s wide hangar. American composer Caroline Shaw’s In Manus Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Goldberg Variations Bassoon Consort Frankfurt (MDG)The only performances of Bach's Goldbergs which don't hit the spot for me tend to be those played on harpsichord. Piano will always be best, but I've enjoyed versions for harp, guitar, string orchestra and accordion. This improbable new transcription is for nine bassoons: eight regulars plus a contra. It feels reassuringly ‘right’ – presumably because we’re so used to hearing bassoons in baroque music. Henrik Rabien’s arrangement sticks to Bach’s keys, the only significant alteration being the transposition of many lines an octave down Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“The rests, the silences in Bach are never for nothing,” I once heard the Dutch cellist and baroque specialist Anner Bylsma telling a student in a masterclass. “You jump up from them, you reach higher.” Hearing the Bach Collegium Japan on Sunday night kept bringing those phrases to mind, because the listener in the acoustic of Saffron Hall really does get to hear this music, so delicately played, emerging again and again from silence. The performers stand in readiness. Then, propelled by Masaaki Suziki’s benign, ultra-clear beat, the music springs into action. The unflamboyant, serving- Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Masaaki Suzuki’s reputation precedes him. His recordings of Bach’s choral works with Bach Collegium Japan, the group he founded in 1990, have been arguably the finest of recent decades. But visits to the West, and especially to London, are rare, so this evening’s concert offered a valuable opportunity to find out what the dynamics are within the ensemble, and how they achieve such impressive results on disc.Unlike many Bach interpreters, Suzuki is a real conductor. He doesn’t play violin or harpsichord when he leads, he actually conducts. He takes an interest in every detail of the music, Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
In London, seeing the same ballet company do three different pieces in three different theatres over four nights would be some kind of festival. In Berlin, it's just business as usual – albeit quite a busy week! – for the hard-working Staatsballett. Wednesday night saw the opening of a new run of John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet, with Polina Semionova as Juliet, at the Deutsche Oper, Thursday a performance of Artistic Director Nacho Duato's Multiplicity: Forms of Silence and Emptiness at the Komische Oper, while last night the Schiller Theater was packed out for Giselle with the Stuttgart Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The B Minor Mass comes in many shapes and sizes. Martin Feinstein opts for a bright and bijou approach, with period instruments, one to a part, and a choir of ten. The small ensemble sometimes lacks finesse, but makes up for it in dynamism, passion, and sheer joy. There was nothing chamber-scaled about this reading: it was all big gestures and direct emotions.Feinstein leads his eponymous ensemble from the flute. That can lead to curious ensemble dynamics, with many of the movements being led from the (essentially decorative) obbligato flute line. Generally, though, the ensemble is small Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The annual Bach Choir St Matthew Passion is a satisfying mix of new and old. The tradition dates back to 1930, and, as was the fashion then, the choir employed is huge. Applause is kept to a minimum, another nod to tradition, as is the translation of the text into English.But the choir has not been deaf to more recent developments, or to the rise of period performance practice. They now sing with period instrument ensemble Florilegium, and the choir’s musical director, David Hill, led an account that draws on recent trends, not least in the fleet tempos and elegantly shaped phrases, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we delighted here in a guide who proved as accomplished a presenter as she is a performer of genius.Nicola Benedetti has an Italian name, a Scottish accent, and an utterly charming manner as she enthused, with immense knowledge, over a series of clips from 60 years of television broadcasts of the leading violinists of the day. She made no attempt to Read more ...