Elgar
Connolly, Middleton, Leeds Lieder online review - epic voyage on a luxury vesselTuesday, 27 April 2021
Some lockdown-era recital programmes have doled out miserly short measures, as performers gallop through a brief, rushed hour (or less) of music as if afraid to tax the online patience of their disembodied audience. If this final concert in Leeds... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla online review - muted celebrationsThursday, 19 November 2020
“This year was supposed to be so very different” said Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when he spoke to theartsdesk earlier this year. Talk about an understatement. The CBSO has hardly been alone in... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bruckner, Elgar, ProkofievSaturday, 01 August 2020
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 Australian World Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (ABC Classics)I love Bruckner’s mature symphonies, but they still baffle me. Mostly in terms of how certain performances work, or don’t work, and the near-impossibility of... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Elgar, Scarlatti, Vienna Philharmonic OrchestraSaturday, 18 January 2020
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Elgar London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle (Decca)Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s debut album included a brilliantly punchy account of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No 1 alongside various odds and sods. This second CD repeats the... 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... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Coates, Dvořák, Martinů, PeñalosaSaturday, 30 November 2019
Eric Coates: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 BBC Philharmonic/John Wilson (Chandos)One reason to love Eric Coates and his music is discovering that his compositional routine involved waiting “until he was properly dressed in the morning, complete... Read more... |
Williams, LPO, Alsop, RFH review - sleek lines and pastoral tonesMonday, 11 November 2019
The London Philharmonic’s Isle of Noises, a year-long festival dedicated to music of the British Isles, drew towards its close with this programme of Butterworth, Elgar and Walton. Marin Alsop was a good choice to lead, especially for Walton’s... Read more... |
The Apostles, LPO, Brabbins, RFH review - Elgar's melancholy New Testament snapshotsMonday, 28 October 2019
The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius... Read more... |
Last Night of the Proms, Barton, BBCSO, Oramo review – woke not brokeSunday, 15 September 2019
The BBC put social and ethnic diversity at the heart of this Last Night programme. The concert opened with a new work, by Daniel Kidane, called Woke, and the first half was dominated by the music of black and female composers. In the second half,... Read more... |
Prom 53: Connolly, Gregory, Tappan, BBCSO & Chorus, Davis review - citizens of the world uniteFriday, 30 August 2019
Let's be clear: this was a Prom of world-class works by English composers, not a conservative concert of English music. Politically speaking, Elgar was one of the few on the right, but how different inwardly, speaking through the poet Arthur O’... Read more... |
10 Questions for Cellist Raphael WallfischMonday, 13 May 2019
Cellist Raphael Wallfisch thinks outside of the box. His concert repertoire spans the popular concerto choices – the Elgar, the Dvořák – but he doesn’t stop there, and makes a point of seeking out the lesser-known and the little-heard. He has a... Read more... |
Bronfman, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - weight and witMonday, 29 April 2019
Vladimir Jurowski is always a conductor for making connections, so one wonders why Brahms's Second Piano Concerto wasn't the first-half choice in this programme from the start (the advertised original had been the much stormier No 1). The sleight-of... Read more... |
