Bach
Richard Bratby
Bent Sørensen has christened his new harpsichord concerto Sei Anime: “six souls”. The six concise movements, written for Mahan Esfahani and a chamber-sized orchestra, are modelled, apparently, on the dance movements of a Bach keyboard suite. But as Sørensen explained from the stage – standing next to Esfahani’s gleaming black harpsichord – two further anecdotes explain the name. It’s borrowed from a range of French womenswear, seen in a Copenhagen shop: the audience laughed.But it’s also derived from a mis-spelling on the manuscript of JS Bach’s six partitas and sonatas for unaccompanied Read more ...
David Nice
"Contemporary classical", for want of a better term, works best in concert as a cornucopia of shortish new works offering a healthy range of styles and voices. Add to the mix six of the most exhilarating and original chamber concertos ever, by no means casting complementary premieres in the shade, put together some of the UK’s best musicians and make it an afternoon marathon taking place in the round aatn extraordinary venue, and success should be total.And it was, on Saturday from noon to 5.30pm, in the exquisite surroundings of Malling Abbey The idea isn't unprecedented: the Swedish Read more ...
Michael Price
There are lots of ways that we respond to great works of art – intellectually and emotionally, then visually, aurally and even by taste and smell, depending on the art in question. I have a habit of screwing my eyes tight shut and bringing to mind a piece of favourite music, or book, or person, and it seems a glowing imprint forms behind your eyelids. You could try it now!I’ve been fascinated with Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto since I was at school, mostly because I was a trumpet player, and Bach’s super-high trumpet part was regarded as the Mount Everest of brass playing – a peak I Read more ...
graham.rickson
JS Bach: Magnificat, CPE Bach: Magnificat Gaechinger Cantorey/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus Music)Coupling this pair of Magnificat settings on a single CD makes so much sense. JS Bach’s 1723 Magnificat is wonderfully served here, Hans-Christoph Rademann’s Gaechinger Cantorey turning in a performance which marries lyricism with rhythmic zest. Rademann’s 19-voice choir make a thrilling sound at full pelt (listen to them in the “Fecit potentiam”) and there’s some exquisite orchestral playing from recorders and natural trumpets. Solo voices, drawn from the chorus, are exceptionally good Read more ...
Richard Bratby
JS Bach’s Passions as music theatre? Well, why not? Whatever the aura of untouchability around these works, they were always conceived as part of a bigger picture: a communal sacred ritual in which the divide between performer and audience wasn’t so much blurred as nonexistent.Anything that gets us closer to that experience surely serves Bach’s ends; at any rate, something needs to be done to break these works out of the curious sterility of so many modern concert performances or the frosty purity of the recording studio. In that light, English Touring Opera’s decision to tour the St John Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The four years of Angela Hewitt’s globe-trotting “Bach Odyssey” confirmed time and again that she brings a nonpareil artistry and authority to the most demanding, and rewarding, of all keyboard repertoires. Yet the Canadian pianist, as we already knew, carries plenty of other arrows in her musical quiver. At the Wigmore Hall on Saturday, her mixed programme blended some choice Bach – four selections from the Well-Tempered Clavier’s second book – with a brace of Mozart sonatas, along with works by Ravel and Chabrier. Her recordings of the latter pair’s solo piano pieces emphatically prove her Read more ...
Sarah Kent
I would suggest watching River on the largest possible screen, so you can bask in the breathtaking beauty of the visuals. Directed by the Australian Jennifer Peedom, who won awards for Mountain and Sherpa, the documentary celebrates the magnificence of rivers and reminds us that we are utterly dependent on water for our survival. “Humans have long loved rivers,” says narrator Willem Dafoe but, he asks, “as we have learned to harness their power, have we also forgotten to revere them?”The answer, of course, is “yes” and the film reveals our propensity for treating rivers merely as resources – Read more ...
graham.rickson
Americascapes – music by Loeffler, Ruggles, Hanson and Cowell Basque National Orchestra/Robert Trevino (Ondine)This is great: a compilation of lesser-known American orchestral music played with panache by a Spanish orchestra teamed with an American conductor. Charles Loeffler was born in Berlin in 1861 and joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist in 1882. His A Pagan Poem was a repertoire work in the early 20th century; Stokowski’s recording is still available. La Mort de Tintagiles is worth hearing, an extravagant 1897 tone poem based on a dark Maeterlinck play. What’s being described Read more ...
graham.rickson
Malcolm Arnold: Complete Symphonies and Dances National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny (Naxos)Working through these nine symphonies in chronological order is a fascinating and disturbing experience, the giddy peaks and deep troughs of Sir Malcolm Arnold’s personal life mirrored in sound. If you’ve only ever encountered Arnold’s lighter output, you’re in for a surprise. There’s plenty of sardonic humour and a lengthy string of improbably memorable tunes, but the prevailing impression is one of deep seriousness. Arnold often wrote for large Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
If a standard-sized recital hall can be a lonely place for a solo violinist, playing an auditorium of Barbican dimensions must feel like crossing a desert under pitiless spotlight sun. Happily, Nicola Benedetti’s prowess as a communicator means that she made those trackless wastes shrink into a shared garden where she, and we, explored her instrument’s many kinds of bloom. Defiantly, a solitary figure in red on the enormous stage, she began her recital with Bach’s D minor partita – and the mighty, earth-moving Chaconne which completes it. Post-interval, she moved onwards through the history Read more ...
Filippo Gorini
A past work of art either still speaks to us in the present, or it is dead. To try and understand a masterpiece, we tend to look at its past: we study it, analyse it, read biographies of the artist behind it and chronicles of its historical background. But it is even more interesting to see what happened to the work after it was finished. What did it mean to the following generations, and, more critically, what does it mean to us today? Is the flame that lit it still burning, or did the ashes die out?No other composer has influenced future generations in the same measure as Johann Sebastian Read more ...
graham.rickson
Die stille Stadt: Songs by Alma Mahler, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold Dorothea Herbert (soprano), Peter Nilsson (piano) (7 Mountain Records)German dramatic soprano Dorothea Herbert will be playing Leonore in a new Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of Fidelio in October. Her debut album provides a welcome excuse to go back to Vienna and re-visit some Lieder from the cusp of the 20th century. Pianist is Chicago-born, Netherlands-based Peter Nilsson, and the album has been beautifully recorded at former radio studios in Hilversum. There’s another timely ‘hook’: the Read more ...