Brahms
Tasmin Little Farewell Recital, RFH review - memories, tributes and dreamsFriday, 23 October 2020
Bidding farewell to the Royal Festival Hall, Tasmin Little was at the very peak of her powers. It’s almost unthinkable that we will never see her play here again. Many have hoped that she’d be one of those musicians who announce their retirement... Read more... |
Baker, Ridout, LaFollette, Schwizgebel, Fidelio Orchestra Cafe review - fun and ferocityWednesday, 14 October 2020
How many musicians can you fit in the main space of the Fidelio Orchestra Café? The answer is 23 string players in masks, for the recording of Strauss’s Metamorphosen of which I was a solitary witness in the summer. With diners accommodated,... Read more... |
Maggini Quartet/Friend, Solem Quartet, Bandstand Chamber Festival review - in harmony with natureMonday, 14 September 2020
Music going back to nature, or rather the managed nature of a London park, can make you think and feel quite differently about great composers’ responses to the world around them. To hear Dvořák’s blissful “American” Quartet the Friday before last... Read more... |
Berlin Philharmoniker, Karajan, Digital Concert Hall review - a captivating musical time capsuleThursday, 09 April 2020
When I saw that the Berlin Philharmonic had thrown open the doors to its virtual concert hall the thing that most interested me was to see some Karajan. When I was a child in the mid-1980s I lived for a while in Berlin and my father took me to the... Read more... |
Skelton, Rice, BBCSO, Gardner, Barbican review – romanticism’s last standSaturday, 14 March 2020
Only a modest audience turned up for this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, though it was unclear if this was caused by the threat of airborne disease or the inclusion of Schoenberg on the programme. The result was a paradoxical intimacy, with the... Read more... |
Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, QEH review - inspired collegiality at the highest levelFriday, 28 February 2020
Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss are not the composers you'd hear at a typical chamber music concert. Their early efforts at piano quartets made up the first half of an evening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Benjamin Grosvenor and friends that... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Magnard, SkemptonSaturday, 15 February 2020
Brahms: The Orchestral Music Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Kurt Masur (Decca Eloquence)Conductor Kurt Masur's role in Germany’s reunification has tended to obscure his musical strengths. I'd previously dismissed him as a safe, reliable pair... Read more... |
Bauer, CBSO, Koenig, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - Christoph pulls it offFriday, 13 December 2019
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s programmes in Birmingham are so personal – so utterly bespoke – that in the event of her being indisposed, they present something of a problem. That’s what happened this week. The programme was vintage Gražinytė-Tyla –... Read more... |
O/Modernt Soloists, Sonoro Ensemble, Wimbledon International Music Festival review - pure instrumental poetryMonday, 18 November 2019
If you're going to run a music festival with flair, it's not enough just to have a run of star performers who pop up for single events. The 11th Wimbledon International Music Festival can offer those – Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, for instance... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Bright, Dvořák, Gipps, RotaSaturday, 05 October 2019
Brahms: Symphony No 3, Dvořák: Symphony No 8 Bamberger Symphoniker/Jakub Hruša (Tudor)Brahms 3 and Dvořák 8 make for an interesting pairing: Brahms at his most autumnal and introspective coupled with Dvořák in ebullient mood. There's a useful... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Sibelius, Thomas WilsonSaturday, 27 July 2019
Brahms: The Piano Quartets The Primrose Piano Quartet (Meridian)Schoenberg complained that performances of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet never pleased him (“the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings”).... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Shostakovich, Johannes PramsohlerSaturday, 27 April 2019
Brahms, orch. Schoenberg: Piano Quartet No 1 in G minor, Parry: Elegy for Brahms Gävle Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martín (Ondine)Schoenberg's flamboyant take on Brahms's G Minor Piano Quartet sounds less and less authentically Brahmsian the more... Read more... |
