London Sinfonietta
Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King/ Birtwistle's Secret Theatre, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 17 June 2011
"I used to be able to run down these," whispered a wobbly 77-year-old Harrison Birtwistle to friends as he stumbled down the stairs to the Queen Elizabeth Hall stage to take his bow at last night's London Sinfonietta concert (for some inexplicable... Read more... |
Eliane Radigue/New London Chamber Choir, London Sinfonietta, James Weeks, Spitalfields MusicWednesday, 15 June 2011
What strange goings-on at this year's Spitalfields Music festival. One church is set ablaze by a female laptop trio; another is swamped by 17th-century collectivists; one man opens up a black hole with the back of his guitar; and a harpist becomes a... Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Atherton, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 15 April 2011
The most interesting thing about Louis Andriessen's musical snapshot of the famous eroticist Anaïs Nin - being given its UK premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night - was that the scene on the chaise longue in which Nin (Cristina... Read more... |
Unsuk Chin Day, BarbicanMonday, 11 April 2011
Some of the most exciting Western classical music being composed today comes from the Far East. Composers from Japan and South Korea - possibly because they find themselves in a different intellectual cycle to us in the West - seem to be able to do... Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Adès, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 11 March 2011
Like so much fine music, Gerald Barry's new work began life as detritus. Feldman's Sixpenny Editions, which received its world premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, are elaborations on the tacky little Edwardian jingles whose... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Classical Music and OperaFriday, 31 December 2010
Earlier this month, George Osborne, Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were spotted in a Royal Opera House box surveying the country's most expensive artistic patrimony. What they thought - and how they and the Arts Council might wield their axe - will... Read more... |
Lachenmann Weekend, Southbank CentreMonday, 25 October 2010
Helmut Lachenmann is to instrumental technique what The Joy of Sex was to suburban nookie. A conduit to a whole new carnal world. Even those of us supposedly well versed in what a stringed instrument can do watched the Arditti Quartet perform the... Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Atherton, BBC Singers, Royal Albert HallThursday, 05 August 2010
The Tenebrae service of Maundy Thursday sees Satan's removal men take over holy duties. Crosses are veiled, lights are extinguished, songs of wailing erupt. Stravinsky's Threni (receiving its Proms debut last night) is a setting of these wails - the... Read more... |
Varèse 360°, SouthbankSunday, 18 April 2010
For those of you who think that classical music ends with Mahler - or Brahms just to be on the safe side - that the musical experimentation of the past 60 years was some sort of grim continental joke, an extended whoopee cushion of a musical period... 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... |
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