cello
Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a rainbow of British musicTuesday, 11 February 2025For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented poetry full justice. That “pennant universal” was reflected in two superlative soloists from South Africa and... Read more... |
Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguiling trip around the worldMonday, 10 February 2025![]() It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper of this enjoyably esoteric evening. Dutch cellist Hadewych van Gent began the pianissimo movement of... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Sinfonia of London, Wilson, Barbican review - taking the roof off the BarbicanWednesday, 16 October 2024![]() A programme of less-loved siblings – Shostakovich’s gnarly Second Cello Concerto and Rachmaninov’s “not-the-Second” Symphony No. 1 – gave John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London the chance to do what they do best: force an audience to take a second... Read more... |
Prom 49, Kobekina, Czech Philharmonic, Hrůša review - what an orchestraWednesday, 28 August 2024![]() How easy it is to fall instantly in love with the Dvořák Cello Concerto. And particularly when it is played by an orchestra as fine as the Czech Philharmonic.Everything’s there in the opening minute. We get our first, wonderful. ear-wormish... Read more... |
Abel Selaocoe / Dermot Dunne & Martin Tourish, Dublin International Chamber Music Festival - genius transfigures geniusFriday, 07 June 2024![]() No-one in the musical world could possibly surpass the communicative skills of Abel Selaocoe – pushing the boundaries of cello and vocal technique in a myriad of voices, all cohering in works of staggering breadth, getting the audience to sing at... Read more... |
Segev, LPO, Lyniv, RFH review - melody, magic, and mourningMonday, 12 February 2024![]() We began in a forest packed with dangers and delights and ended, also in the Czech lands, with an infectiously joyful country dance. In between, however, came a sombre and spellbinding exposure to the pain and grief of war.Last night at the Royal... Read more... |
Selaocoe, Schimpelsberger, LSO, Ward, Barbican review - force of nature crowns dance jamboreeFriday, 17 November 2023It was good of the EFG London Jazz Festival to support this concert and bring in a different audience from the one the LSO is used to. But how to define it? Jazz only briefly figured in works by Gary Carpenter, Bartók, Barber and Abel Selaocoe. The... Read more... |
Manic Street Creature, Southwark Playhouse review - songs in the key of a traumatised lifeFriday, 27 October 2023![]() There’s an old-fashioned feel to the story at its outset: Young woman, guitar in hand, Northern accent announcing as much as it always did, who makes a new life in London, all the money going on a room in Camden. One recalls Georgy Girl or Darling,... Read more... |
Fung, RPO, Schwarz, Cadogan Hall review - high style from new cellist and conductor on the blockThursday, 28 September 2023![]() You go to a concert, three-quarters of it popular classics – also great masterpieces – having been told you have to hear a brilliant young cellist, and into the bargain you also discover a remarkable conductor and an orchestra on top form shedding... Read more... |
Gerhardt, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - calm and clear conductingMonday, 30 January 2023![]() Ben Gernon’s calm and clear way of conducting an orchestra (something he once told me he’d observed in the work of his mentor, Colin Davis) is good to watch and, I would guess, welcomed by those he directs. Since his time with the BBC... Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Harry Baker, Noisenight 13, Jazz Cafe review - distinctive and easygoing chemistryTuesday, 29 November 2022![]() The elation in the queue was palpable as people stood laughing and chatting in the November cold waiting for the doors of the Jazz Café to open for the latest crowd-funded event organised by Through the Noise. This 13th Noisenight – which brings... Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Friends, Bold Tendencies review - intimate tenderness under a car-park roofSaturday, 03 September 2022![]() When I worked in the Music Discount Centre decades ago, and non-stop CDs in the background were ordained, a customer remarked wryly of eight Bayreuth Festival horns playing Wagner “very crepuscular”. Five cellists playing Bach and Villa-Lobos as... Read more... |
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