contemporary classical
Cuckmere: A Portrait/Environment 2.0, Brighton Festival review - landscape, politics and art collide
Nick Hasted
Sitting between the South Downs and the sea, Brighton’s borders are defined by nature. The Downs’ 2010 designation as a National Park also legislatively limits urban encroachment. The typically beautiful Sussex village of Falmer is on the city’s edge, supporting while doing its best to ignore two universities and a football stadium, with a pond and church at its theoretical heart but an A-road to London gouged through its middle, requiring a bridge between pond and pub.Falmer is also home to Sussex University’s Attenborough Centre, where patrons can ponder the intertwining of rural Read more ...
stephen.walsh
This is the 50th Vale of Glamorgan Festival, and as its founder and director, John Metcalf, reminded us in a brief post-interval speech, he has been at all of them. Indeed the festival has increasingly mapped itself on to his personal view of what a modern music festival should be: it should, he would argue, contain only music by living composers; and they should only be composers that he, John Metcalf, admires. It sounds like a recipe for the ultimate niche event. But, in fact, it has steadily grown into one of the most impressive, sharply profiled new music festivals anywhere in Europe Read more ...
David Nice
Depression, with or without psychotic episodes, is a rare subject for drama or music theatre - and with good reason: the sheer unrelenting monotony of anguish and self-absorption is hard to reproduce within a concentrated time-span. So we still stand in awe of Sarah Kane for the way she managed, months before her suicide, to wring from the depths and write in blood such a kaleidoscopic range of despair and black vision in 4.48 Psychosis; in awe, too, of composer Philip Venables, for finding an equal variety, and an even greater eclecticism, in the musical voices to tell a drama of pain that Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Space is big – that seems to be the message of Unsuk Chin’s new oratorio Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles. The work sets texts, ranging from the Baroque to the present day, concerned with space and scale. The work’s cosmic aspirations are reflected in its performing forces, a huge orchestra with augmented percussion, chorus, children's choir, and, for good measure, a suitably Gothic organ part. The work was given a colourful and atmospheric performance by the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen, with lighting effects – almost total darkness to begin, later a blue/green flood across the organ Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Frederic Rzewski marked his 80th birthday with a visit to the Wigmore Hall, for the premiere of his aptly titled Ages. The pianist Igor Levit is an ardent champion of Rzewski’s music and was the prime mover behind the commission (though it was financed by the Wigmore Hall with the support of Annette Scawen Morreau), and the piece was clearly written to showcase his many strengths. Levit is a master of atmosphere, and has a keen sense of musical drama, both of which were much in evidence, and much needed, in this sprawling, hour-long work.Rzewski (pictured below) has always been an eclectic Read more ...
graham.rickson
David Collins: Violin Sonatas Duo Ardoré (Sheva)There's little biographical information to be found online about British composer David Collins, other than that he was born in 1953, studied at the RNCM and has only recently started to compose full time. He doesn’t have Twitter feeds or Facebook accounts to maintain, which is probably why the pieces on this disc sound so well-wrought, so considered. This music doesn't shout or stamp its feet, the arguments easier to follow because everything's pared down to its essence. Like the second movement of Collins’ Violin Sonata No. 1, a modern take on Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
It’s as intricate as it is concise. The depth to the architecture of James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto – which was given its world premiere this week by saxophonist Amy Dickson and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – is quite astounding, and all the more so for being packed into three five-minute movements. As with much of MacMillan’s music, the work is inspired by Scottish folk tunes, which certainly takes the saxophone into unusual territory in this concerto for solo instrument and string orchestra.The first movement, based on a march, strathspey and reel, is tight and spry, with the solo Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Even after the venue’s 30-month refurbishment, you still would not choose the sprawling foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall as the prime site for a pre-concert speech. By the time, last night, that Heritage Lottery Fund chair Sir Peter Luff got to say his piece – after Southbank Centre luminaries Jude Kelly, Elaine Bedell and Gillian Moore – the ambient din from a full house gathered to celebrate the QEH re-opening almost drowned his words.Sir Peter pointed out that this auditorium and its neighbours occupy Thames-side land laid waste by Luftwaffe bombs. The commitment to diversity – in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Lūcija Garūta: Music for Piano Reinis Zariņš (piano), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala (LMIC/SKANI)The Latvian composer Lūcija Garūta (1902-1977) reached maturity in the early days of Latvian independence, a supremely talented pianist, composer and polymath. Garūta was among the first Latvian women to drive a car, besides sailing a private yacht and pursuing an interest in science. She travelled to Paris and studied, briefly, with Alfred Cortot and Paul Dukas, identifying with Latvia’s musical “new romanticism”, a movement which sought to look forward rather than idealise Read more ...
graham.rickson
Visions of Prokofiev Lisa Batiashvili (violin), Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Yannick Nézet-Seguin (DG)Buried beneath the soft focus photos and waffly booklet are very decent performances of Prokofiev’s two Violin Concertos. Lisa Batiashvili enters the Concerto No. 1’s first movement imperceptibly, floating over a carpet of shimmering tutti strings. This is one of the great concerto openings, Batiashvili’s reticence melting away just before the two-minute mark. The quirkier middle section is a treat here, Yannick Nézet-Seguin’s responsive COE strings alert to every sharp accent. Read more ...
Richard Bratby
“Would you like a veil?” asked a steward, offering a length of black gauze, and when you’re at a production by Birmingham Opera Company it’s usually wisest to say yes. You get used to it - the frantic Google-mapping to locate the venue; the hike through the broken concrete and mud of Birmingham’s post-industrial fringe to whatever derelict factory the company has occupied this time around; the racing certainty that at some point you’re going to be hustled through a passageway by a bomber jacket-clad Graham Vick. (At La Scala and Covent Garden, audiences watch what Vick has directed. Only in Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Ruthless Jabiru is an all-Australian chamber orchestra based in London. It is the brainchild of conductor Kelly Lovelady, who in recent years has geared the ensemble towards political and environmental concerns. Previous projects have highlighted environmental damage in central Australia and the campaign to end sponsorship by oil companies in the arts sector. For Saturday's concert, Lovelady and her colleagues turned their attentions to the humanitarian crisis of refugees setting out for Australia by sea.It was very much a concept event, with five contemporary works, two of them Read more ...