Mendelssohn
igor.toronyilalic
Piano ballades and fantasies are the repositories of dreams. They are the places where the mind is left to wander, to roam precipitously, unaided by known paths, undisturbed by familiar structures. The romantic fantasies and ballades of last night's Wigmore Hall recital plunge and soar, catch you by the feet and dangle you by the ankles. To cast the right spell, to heave the right ho, you need the right storyteller, one like the ancient Mariner: a glittering eye, a hoary beard, a man of myth and terror. In fact, you need what we got: the towering Paul Bunyan-like Russian, Nikolai Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
It was a hallucination, I know, yet it wasn't unconvincing. The lurching, Alpha-maleish pose on the podium, the muscular pawing, the slight animal crouch, all lent weight to the idea that I had harboured for most of last night's performance of Mahler's Tenth Symphony that conductor Riccardo Chailly was in fact a bear. It was one of those nights. Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra were creating a new reality from Mahler’s Tenth, a nightmarish one that was bedevilling my senses. So, for the duration of the performance, my world was decidedly wonky.The enormous Bergian outbursts in the Read more ...