piano
Two-Piano Marathon, Kings Place review - dazzling duos, deep watersMonday, 08 October 2018
You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly... Read more... |
Anderson & Roe, RLPO, Tali, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool review - measured fireSaturday, 06 October 2018
There must be something of a beauty parade going on in Liverpool now that Vasily Petrenko has called time on his tenure at Philharmonic Hall. After all, someone will need to step into his shoes from 2021 after he departs for the Royal... Read more... |
Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier - Book 2, Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review – high drama in 24 short actsFriday, 05 October 2018
Bach specialists like to explain that the second book of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed around 1740 and thus almost two decades after the first, draws on more of the fancy and daring “modern” music of its time than its... Read more... |
Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen, Kings Place review - one plus one equals a hundredThursday, 04 October 2018
We could probably spend all day pondering what makes a great musical partnership. Is it long experience, special sensitivity, a shared sense of humour? We’d get nowhere, though because there is, genuinely, something about it that can't be explained... Read more... |
Uchida, Connolly, Skelton, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – songs of farewellMonday, 01 October 2018
Not all composers require the finger of mortality pointing at them to develop what becomes a late style. Charges of detachment and even indifference have been levelled at the B flat major Piano Concerto K595 which Mozart completed early in the year... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Ivanovs, Shi-An Costello, Sean ShibeSaturday, 29 September 2018
Jãnis Ivanovs: Symphony No. 5; Juris Karlsons: Music for Symphony Orchestra 1945 Latvian National Symphony Orchestra/Andris Poga (Skani)Jãnis Ivanovs’ promising conducting career was kyboshed by the outbreak of war and the Soviet invasion of... Read more... |
CD: Prince - Piano and a Microphone 1983Thursday, 20 September 2018
Knowing a deceased artist's archives are available for re-release is a double-edged sword. Will there be a shoddy flood of any and every old bit of tat a la Jimi Hendrix? Will there be half-arsed, half-finished and even fake songs bodged together by... Read more... |
CD: Kandace Springs - IndigoWednesday, 05 September 2018
Back in 2014, Kandace Springs was the upcoming star of modern soul, mentored by Prince: she closed his 30th anniversary Purple Rain concert. Then, with her first album Soul Eyes, she was heralded as an important jazz vocalist. The release talks of... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Suoni dal Golfo Festival - romantics shine in the Bay of PoetsMonday, 03 September 2018
If only Liszt had started at the end of his Byron-inspired opera Sardanapalo. The mass immolation of Assyrian concubines might have been something to compare with the end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Instead he only sketched out the first act,... Read more... |
CD: Waxahatchee - Great Thunder EPMonday, 03 September 2018
Hot on the heels of her celebrated 2017 album Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield shares an EP of a very different nature. The Waxahatchee sound is stripped down to its most bare and essential; much of Great Thunder is simply Crutchfield sat at a... Read more... |
Prom 66, Wang, Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko review - intense perfectionSunday, 02 September 2018
Setting aside any reservations about a slight overall timidity in repertoire choices - no problems with that last night - this year's Proms have worked unexpectedly well, above all with their weekend strands. The trump card with the usual roster of... Read more... |
Prom 63, Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier - Book 2, Schiff review - the universe withinThursday, 30 August 2018
It was the C major Prelude and Fugue from this second book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, not its more familiar counterpart in Book One, which found itself tracked on a gold-plated disc inside Voyager I to reach whatever intelligent life there... Read more... |
