piano
graham.rickson
JS Bach: Magnificat, CPE Bach: Magnificat Gaechinger Cantorey/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus Music)Coupling this pair of Magnificat settings on a single CD makes so much sense. JS Bach’s 1723 Magnificat is wonderfully served here, Hans-Christoph Rademann’s Gaechinger Cantorey turning in a performance which marries lyricism with rhythmic zest. Rademann’s 19-voice choir make a thrilling sound at full pelt (listen to them in the “Fecit potentiam”) and there’s some exquisite orchestral playing from recorders and natural trumpets. Solo voices, drawn from the chorus, are exceptionally good Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The three Canadians Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Jason Beck (Chilly Gonzales) and Tiga Sontag (aka just Tiga, who exec produced this album) are each so laden with image and persona it is easy to forget they are musicians sometimes. Hawtin has since the early Nineties not only brought techno to mass audiences, but adorned it with all kinds of conceptual and design spectacle in arenas and galleries as much as in nighclubs. Sontag too, has turned dance music into theatre to huge success, albeit in a much more knowing, camp sense ever since the turn of the millennium electroclash era. And the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The four years of Angela Hewitt’s globe-trotting “Bach Odyssey” confirmed time and again that she brings a nonpareil artistry and authority to the most demanding, and rewarding, of all keyboard repertoires. Yet the Canadian pianist, as we already knew, carries plenty of other arrows in her musical quiver. At the Wigmore Hall on Saturday, her mixed programme blended some choice Bach – four selections from the Well-Tempered Clavier’s second book – with a brace of Mozart sonatas, along with works by Ravel and Chabrier. Her recordings of the latter pair’s solo piano pieces emphatically prove her Read more ...
David Nice
After the turbulence of masterpieces over the previous three evenings – Janáček, Britten, and the greats featured in this duo’s Fidelio Café fundraiser for Ukraine – it was balm to feel the air and leisure of the first three miniatures in this beautifully-planned programme.Extra magic came from the physical distancing: more often Kolesnikov and Tsoy sit alongside one another at a single keyboard, but at opposite ends of two more or less interlocking grands, eye co-ordination on the visual front and the space you could hear in the acoustics of beautiful St Luke’s paid off. The partners are Read more ...
Ian Julier
Who could have imagined the table-turning controversy that might have cast doubt on the inclusion of works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky when planning this programme?Before raising the baton, Holly Mathieson expressed the hope that Russian music written before the current crisis would survive to be performed after it. Vociferous applause from the audience and bravo to the Association of British Orchestra and its members for their announcement of a measured approach and refusal to cancel Russian music. Let’s hope other arts institutions follow their cue. Completed in 1940 and bearing Read more ...
Robert Beale
There was something extraordinarily powerful and moving about Saturday’s Beethoven commemoration concert by the BBC Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Omer Meir Wellber.Originally planned for 2020 but of course postponed, its second part consisted of a UK premiere: a work co-commissioned by the BBC to be the opening of something quite novel. Wellber told the audience it would be like “a symphonic poem by Beethoven”. He meant that Ella Milch-Sheriff’s The Eternal Stranger would be followed without any break by both the Funeral March from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony and then (again with no Read more ...
Ian Julier
With reference to smiles beginning to emerge from behind our masks, Mark Wigglesworth, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor, wrote the most hopeful and optimistic note of welcome in the programme for this concert featuring Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 22, K482 and Schubert's “Great” C major Symphony. Given the dramatically darkened world context since writing his note, the conductor’s hope for “a generous dose of vitamin D” and “an evening of cloudless blue sky” potentially seemed cruelly hijacked.The opening work, Jonathan Dove’s Sunshine, was composed in 2016 as Read more ...
David Nice
The headline was never going to be snappy, but “Klaus Mäkelä conducts…” as a start would have pulled it all together. A trip to Oslo last week was not wasted: he did indeed take charge of one of his two main orchestras, in a typically offbeat programme, a total sensation (*****).But when he called in sick from his hotel room yesterday morning, the London Philharmonic Orchestra sequel ((****), featuring two of the same composers, had to go ahead without him and also without Kaija Saariaho’s Asteroid 4179:Toutatis, programmed by Mäkelä to lead us straight into Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Read more ...
Ian Julier
The Drama and Romance of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s promotional hook for this concert signalled a heady musical mix. Appropriate for the stark contrasts of mood central to Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, but potentially less so for Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8 that casts barely a cloud to compromise its predominantly sunny G major disposition shared with the outer movements of the Beethoven.In the event, resolution of the conflict between profane and sacred love in Tannhäuser’s ultimate salvation, together with the framing of the concerto’s central dark Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Two pianists; two concertos; two orchestras. It is not often that Edinburgh’s most venerable concert hall plays host, on consecutive nights, to two of our national orchestras offering strikingly similar programmes.While the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Maxim Emelyanychev had the young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, the following night saw the Royal Scottish National Orchestra tackle Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the not-quite-so-young Steven Osborne as soloist. Both orchestras also included a Beethoven symphony in their programmes.On paper Read more ...
David Nice
Boléro and Scheherazade may be popular Sunday afternoon fare, but both are masterpieces and need the most sophisticated handling. High hopes that the new principal conductor the Philharmonia players seem to love so much, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, would do Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov justice were exceeded in a dream of a concert.It's the first time I’ve seen a packed audience at the Royal Festival Hall since lockdown. Young people were very much in evidence: even if there were special or free offers, the fact is they came. And what was the overall lure? Those popular classics? Or perhaps the 2019 Read more ...
Ian Julier
Even with a chill wind blowing from the Sussex Downs, this copper-bottomed Overture-Concerto-Symphony Sunday matinée was guaranteed to entice concert-goers to Eastbourne’s Sunshine Coast, which duly dazzled both outside and inside the hall.Beethoven’s blazing Egmont Overture, the heady romanticism of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Brahms’ sunny Second Symphony, each with their celebratory finales, proved to be ample fare to warm the cockles of the audience's heart.This was also a great opportunity to catch the striking talents of conductor Catherine Larsen-Maguire in her debut with Read more ...