Jiří Bělohlávek
Helen Hawkins
It seems to be silly season for big-name directors. First, Coppola’s Megalopolis and Steve McQueen’s Blitz: why? Now Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer: double why?What happens in the minds of directors whose careers have matured and whose audiences have come to expect a degree of subtlety and sophistication from them? Apple TV+ has managed to commission Slow Horses, Bad Monkey, Presumed Innocent and Time Bandits of late, some of the best television drama around. But this time it’s come up short. Cuarón has recruited a motley crew, presumably with an eye to their global saleabitliy, for this Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphonies 2 and 7 Wiener Symphoniker/Philippe Jordan (WS/Sony)Philippe Jordan’s cheery face adorns this third volume of Beethoven symphonies from Vienna’s other orchestra, setting the tone fairly well. These are overwhelmingly positive, uplifting performances, superbly played to boot. Nimble speeds, hard timpani sticks and what sound like natural horns and trumpets are a concession to modern (ie. historically informed) practice, but these are at heart big-boned, well-upholstered readings which should improve anyone's mood. How much of an advance Beethoven 2 is over its Read more ...
David Nice
There we had it, in one extraordinary Proms day: the brave new world of contemporary classical music for all in a repurposed Peckham car park followed by the consolidation of the old order in all-Czech programming of remarkable originality and daring in the evening. You can't ask much more of an art-form thato many are claming dead in the water or not worth wide media coverage than those two sides of the same coin.Jakub Hrůša’s variations on a Hussite chorale with substantial chorus-based interludes, managing to squeeze in the five leading Czech composers, was always going to be a Proms Read more ...
theartsdesk
It’s the best-looking Proms season on paper for quite a few years. That might just be a different way of saying we like it, but no-one could reproach Director David Pickard for lack of original programming or diversity (look at the whole, bigger than ever, and who but a click-baiting controversialist or the more conservative diehards could resent the appearance of Sir Tom Jones, still top of his art?) Enjoy the many European visitors, including the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Orchestra of La Scala Milan and the Vienna Philharmonic, while you can; it may not be so easy to bring Read more ...
theartsdesk
The first of Jiří Bělohlávek’s final three appearances in London, conducting his Czech Philharmonic in a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa, came as a shock. The trademark grey curly hair had vanished. Clearly he had undergone chemotherapy, but we all presumed – since no-one pries in these instances – that what had to be cancer was in remission. By the time of his Dvořák Requiem at the Barbican in April, the assumption was that he would carry on for an indefinite period of time. So his death at the untimely age of 71 last Wednesday came as a surprise even to those who knew him better Read more ...
David Nice
Not your usual blockbuster for Holy Week, this. In other words, neither of the Bach Passions but a Requiem, and not – these days, at any rate – one of the more often-performed ones (it's not among the 79 works listed in The BBC Proms Guide to Great Choral Works). Dvořák's laments and optimisms may not soar as consistently as Verdi's, but the (late) style is invariably the man here, and the pay-off for a broken back in the early stages is a bigger healing later on and a final cathartic lament. Certainly no conductor could be more devoted to Dvořák's steady wonders than the great Jiří Read more ...
David Nice
Karel Čapek, the great Czech writer who pioneered some of the most prophetic dramatic fantasies of the early 20th century, thought Janáček was nuts to want to set his wordy play about a 337-year-old woman to music. He could not have anticipated what that septuagenarian genius would achieve. Some of us felt similarly doubtful about singers performing this most conversational of operas with scores and music stands in a "concert staging". But the Albert Hall can be as surprising and as unpredictable as Janáček, and it helped a dream cast, conductor and orchestra to produce vintage Proms magic. Read more ...
David Nice
Janáček's lacerating music-drama of love-led sin and redemption in a 19th century Moravian village is the opera I'd recommend as the first port of call for theatregoers wary of the genre. Its emotional truths are unflinching, its lyricism as constantly surprising as the actions of its characters are often swift and violent. In the opera house, I've never seen a performance that didn't turn its audience inside out. For all the revelations of orchestral beauty, though, a concert performance without a hint of semi-staging can't hope to achieve anything like the same effect, however fine the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Dvořák, Suk, Janáček: Violin Concertos Josef Špaček (violin), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek (Supraphon)Josef Suk's expansive single movement Fantasy in G minor is a big-boned, lovable work; it's a surprise to learn that Suk complained in later years that he'd had “enough of it to last a lifetime.” Suk's large-scale pieces can be a little overbearing. This 23-minute work isn’t. It opens brilliantly witha furious tutti passage full of quirky modulations and punchy accents. You expect that soloist Josef Špaček’s first entry will calm things down, but Suk’s music becomes Read more ...
graham.rickson
Théodore Dubois: Musique Sacrée et Symphonique, Musique de chambre (Ediciones Singulare)Théodore Dubois is the sort of figure whose grave you'd expect to stumble upon in Père Lachaise Cemetery. For decades he was a senior figure in French music, teaching at the Paris Conservatoire for 35 years. Until, that is, his abrupt retirement in 1905, precipitated by his refusal to award the Prix de Rome to a young upstart called Maurice Ravel. Start dipping into this three-disc set, and you can understand why. Dubois's conservative style and impeccable manners place him very much in the 19th Read more ...
graham.rickson
You’ve booked the iconic Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and their charismatic chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek to do a whistle-stop UK tour. Hoorah. But what do you get them to play? The mind boggles with programming possibilities. A symphony by Martinů? Janáček’s Taras Bulba? Suk’s Asrael? Naah – what you do, inevitably, is look at the Classic FM Hall of Fame and ask them to perform The Lark Ascending and the Bruch G minor Concerto.Not that there’s anything wrong with either piece, but I couldn’t help feeling musically short-changed by half of this concert, and wonder if the players felt the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Symphony no 2 Wiener Symphoniker/Carlo Maria Giulini (Wiener Symphoniker)No apologies for reviewing a reissue, as this disc is fabulous. Originally a 1974 EMI recording, it's now released on the Wiener Symphoniker's own label. Carlo Maria Giulini was their Music Director between 1973 and 1976. The orchestra apparently loved him, and there's an affectionate sleeve note penned by Robert Freund, principal horn during his tenure. Giulini's professionalism and quiet humility shine through, and Freund rightly alludes to the conductor's spontaneity. Giulini's few Bruckner recordings Read more ...