Prokofiev
Cinderella, Scottish Ballet, Edinburgh Festival TheatreThursday, 07 January 2016
When producing Cinderella, the main question is: sweet or sour? That Prokofiev score is splendid, but it's no walk in a candy shop; in Act I the stepsisters have passages so scraping, spiky and dissonant that sugar-coating would seem to be out... Read more... |
Hadland / Moser Brothers, Wigmore HallMonday, 04 January 2016
Prokofiev milestones stood proudly at the ends of the New Year’s first three major UK concert programmes. The Second Piano Sonata raged as the zenith of the composer’s generous enfant terrible period in Christian Ihle Hadland’s journey through two... Read more... |
Murray, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Collon, Leeds Town HallSunday, 03 January 2016
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s standard of playing is consistently impressive, so much so that it’s easy to forget that the ensemble is effectively reconstituted from scratch each autumn. Last night’s fresh incarnation, deftly... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Roger Doyle, Mahler, ProkofievSaturday, 02 January 2016
Roger Doyle: Time Machine (Heresy Records)Roger Doyle’s Time Machine is a suite of 11 linked pieces, its starting point being the composer’s archiving of telephone messages recorded while living in late 1980s Dublin. Younger readers won’t know what... Read more... |
RLPO, Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolFriday, 04 December 2015
Why play a very substantial act of ballet music in concert? In the case of Aurora’s wedding entertainment from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, there are at least three good reasons. It embraces the most inventive and unorthodox of divertissements... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Prokofiev, Smetana, ValentiniSaturday, 22 August 2015
Prokofiev: Symphonies 4 (Op.47) & 5, Dreams Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kiril Karabits (Onyx)Prokofiev was adept at recycling good ideas. His Symphony No. 3 is linked thematically to the opera The Fiery Angel, and the less abrasive No 4... Read more... |
Prom 14: Prokofiev Piano ConcertosWednesday, 29 July 2015
Gergiev’s programme for this concert raised eyebrows when the Proms were announced: all five Prokofiev piano concertos, presented in chronological order, over the course of a long evening. As it turned out, he had some good reasons for his plan. The... Read more... |
Cinderella, Wheeldon, London ColiseumThursday, 09 July 2015
Christopher Wheeldon is the purveyor of pretty. You can perfectly well see why San Francisco Ballet, who commissioned a new full-length work from Wheeldon in 2012, got cold feet at the prospect of tackling the difficult, Britten-scored Prince of the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Gál, Prokofiev, Raffi BesalyanSaturday, 13 June 2015
Hans Gál: Symphonies 1-4 Orchestra of the Swan/Kenneth Woods (Avie)Previously paired with those by Schumann, Hans Gál'sfour symphonies are now sensibly repackaged as a slimline two-cd set. Musicians are always trying to make the case for previously... Read more... |
SCO, Swensen, Queen's Hall, EdinburghFriday, 01 May 2015
It was as a violin soloist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra that Joseph Swensen first appeared, in the mid-1980s, on the Scottish musical scene. He went on to become the orchestra’s principal conductor – a long and fruitful collaboration that... Read more... |
Toradze, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSaturday, 11 April 2015
It was melody versus the machine last night as Sakari Oramo’s six voyages around the Nielsen symphonies with the BBC Symphony Orchestra hit the high noon of the 1920s. The fallout from the First World War found three composers scarred but fighting... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Ives, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bizjak Piano DuoSaturday, 11 April 2015
Ives: Symphonies nos 1 and 2 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (Chandos)Mervyn Cooke’s sleeve note for this disc, the first in Sir Andrew Davis’s Charles Ives cycle, sensibly punctures the main myth surrounding this most... Read more... |
