cello
Mitten wir im Leben sind, De Keersmaeker, Queyras, Rosas, Sadler's Wells review - Bach-worthy geniusThursday, 25 April 2019
All Bach is dance, a teacher once told me. The justifiable exaggeration switched on a light; leaping to the Brandenburg Concertos followed. This great work of kinetic art is of a different order. Choreographer and performer Anne Teresa De... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Haydn, SibeliusSaturday, 06 April 2019
Brahms: The Cello Sonatas The Fischer Duo: Norman Fischer (cello), Jeanne Kierman (piano), with Abigail Fischer (mezzo-soprano) (Centaur Records)Comparing Brahms’s pair of cello sonatas is like looking at the two piano concertos. There’s the... Read more... |
Biss, Philharmonia, Boyd, RFH review – compulsive life-forceTuesday, 26 March 2019
Mozart in E flat (the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro) and in G (the K.453 Piano Concerto), and Schubert in C – the “Great” C major Symphony, no less – ushered spring into the Festival Hall on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.Slimmed down to a... Read more... |
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – pictorial, dramatic powerFriday, 26 October 2018
Sir Mark Elder’s first concert in the Hallé Thursday series for 2018-19 was on clearly mapped Hallé territory – Richard Strauss and Elgar. They have a reputation, and a tradition, of playing these composers’ music very well. They’ve already recorded... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2018 - canaries in front of a Périgord altarMonday, 20 August 2018
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans... Read more... |
h 100 Awards: Music - an impressive range of qualityTuesday, 07 August 2018
One of the banes of music culture is over-categorisation. It always has been. The statement that there are only two types of music, good and bad, has been apocryphally attributed to a wide range of figureheads – most especially Louis Armstrong – but... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the East Neuk Festival 2018 - Bach as bedrockFriday, 06 July 2018
There is a tide in the best-planned festivals that comes in and out almost imperceptibly, bringing with it changes as the days move on. Put it down to the kind of perfect planning that discards any one rigid theme, and to forging long-term links... Read more... |
Gerhardt, RPO, Payare, RFH review - personality muted by faceless conductingWednesday, 28 March 2018
Former Royal Philharmonic Orchestra principal conductor Charles Dutoit has been exposed, to little surprise from musicians, as something of a roué whose apparent refusal to take "no" for an answer has rubbed up against the new #MeToo world. So his... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Hindemith, Cantelli, Karajan, Peabody Cello GangSaturday, 10 March 2018
Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphoses, Nobilissima Visione, Concert Music for Strings and Brass WDR Symphony Orchestra/Marek Janowski (Pentatone)Instrumentalists appreciate Hindemith (all those solo sonatas!), as do those orchestral musicians lucky... Read more... |
Capuçon, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH review - Dvořák in blazing focusFriday, 02 February 2018
You can't have too much Dvořák in a single evening, at least not when the works in question operate at the highest level of volatility and melodic abundance like last night's overture, concerto and symphony. "Febrile centrists" might look like an... Read more... |
Weilerstein, Platt, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - insight and passionFriday, 19 January 2018
Alisa Weilerstein is making two visits to Manchester in just over three weeks. Last night it was with the Hallé, next time she’ll be guesting with the Czech Philharmonic. This one was to play the solo in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Sir... Read more... |
Coates, Tenebrae, Short, Kings Place review - effective meeting of cello and choirMonday, 18 December 2017
This time of year lots of choirs give lots of Christmas concerts that are more or less the same: traditional repertoire perhaps sprinkled with a few novelties. But Tenebrae’s concert on Saturday at Kings Place broke the mould with some imaginative... Read more... |
