cello
The Berlin Philharmonic European Concert 2010, Sheldonian Theatre, OxfordSaturday, 01 May 2010![]() "Madness! Madness! Everywhere madness!" The unsung words of cobbler-philosopher Hans Sachs in the third-act prelude to Wagner's Die Meistersinger might seem like an odd opening manifesto for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's annual May Day... Read more... |
LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 29 April 2010![]() For many of us, this was bound to be an emotional evening. Noëlle Mann, doyenne of all things Prokofievian on the editorial, archival, teaching and performing fronts, died peacefully at home last Friday, and it was to her that Vladimir Jurowski... Read more... |
Wolfgang Rihm Day, BarbicanSaturday, 13 March 2010![]() It's hard to miss German composer Wolfgang Rihm. He has an enormous head. There it is, bulging from his giant frame, a big, friendly grin slapped onto it while he wanders around the Barbican on his celebratory day, none of it going to waste. Listen... Read more... |
Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, Barbican HallTuesday, 02 March 2010![]() In every partnership there is a leader, and it’s not always the featured name. While the hall was packed with Ma followers for this rare cello-and-piano recital, what emerged was a richly sensitising foretaste of what the Emanuel Ax residency is... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-up 5Saturday, 20 February 2010![]() This month's classical music releases include mighty new recordings of Bach, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev by major orchestras. Other recordings shine new light on Nielsen and Dallapiccola and make a case for the genius of Bernard Herrmann. From... Read more... |
Christopher Nupen on Filming Music and MusiciansMonday, 18 January 2010![]() "What is it about Schubert’s music that has such power 180 years on? It has nothing to do with who he slept with or what he had for breakfast – it’s the work," insists filmmaker Christopher Nupen, whose series of films about composers is currently... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 4Friday, 15 January 2010![]() Heading up this month's classical selection is a 16-CD budget box set of the complete works of Frédéric Chopin, issued to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the consumptive Pole's birth. Plus we review a rare piano concerto by Ralph Vaughan Williams... Read more... |
New Year Birthdays on the TubeSaturday, 26 December 2009A series celebrating musicians' birthdays. 30 December 1910: Enough of all the seasonal jollity. With any luck, yours was more real than forced. The other side of New Years is, for many of us, a certain existential panic. What happened to the last... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Tim LawrenceSaturday, 12 December 2009![]() Tim Lawrence is an author and academic, whose musical studies have led him from the dance scene of the 1990s to researching New York's disco scene – his Love Saves the Day was the first and remains the definitive history of the music, history and... Read more... |
Extract: Tim Lawrence's Hold On To Your DreamsSaturday, 12 December 2009![]() Linked to Joe Muggs' interview with Tim Lawrence on theartsdesk, this is extracted from the introduction of Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992. Arthur Russell hailed from the Midwest, yet felt at home in... Read more... |
Carlos Acosta, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 02 December 2009![]() It‘s when you see how popstar fame can reach people with more luck than work that Carlos Acosta’s achievement in becoming a truly popular ballet star is underlined. Ballet is just the toughest discipline there is. Great elite artists and great... Read more... |
Schnittke Festival finale, Jurowski, RFHSaturday, 28 November 2009![]() Eliot's "time future contained in time past" has been conductor Vladimir Jurowski's unofficial motto throughout a festival which has had to take itself very seriously, and managed miraculously to carry a surprisingly large, loyal audience... Read more... |
