Prokofiev
Prom 30: Bavouzet, BBC Philharmonic, NosedaTuesday, 06 August 2013It was mostly Russian night at the Proms, and mostly music you could dance to, as a hand jiving Arena Prommer rather distractingly proved in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. Even Prokofiev’s elephantine Second Piano Concerto was... Read more... |
Prom 21: Hope, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, SøndergårdTuesday, 30 July 2013The “Turning Point” in Colin Matthews’ so-named orchestral piece is a change of attitude, a sudden seriousness of purpose, a great effort of will to stop moving and take stock of where it - whatever it is - is going. That Matthews did actually stop... Read more... |
Wang, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dausgaard, Barbican HallSaturday, 23 February 2013Orchestral volcanoes were erupting all over Europe around the year 1915. It was courageous enough to make a mountain chain out of three of them in a single concert. I was less prepared for the white-heat focus applied by that stalwart Dane Thomas... Read more... |
Alexander Nevsky, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brabbins, Barbican HallSunday, 10 February 2013Is Prokofiev’s 1938 score for Alexander Nevsky the greatest film music ever written? Not quite, if only for the fact that Sergei Eisenstein’s second sound-picture glorifying historical role models for the ever more tsar-like Stalin, Ivan the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Eight StringsSaturday, 24 November 2012Prokofiev: Works for Violin Janine Jansen, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski, Boris Brovtsyn (violin) and Itamar Golan (piano) (Decca)Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no 2 was completed just before the composer’s return to... Read more... |
War and Peace: Russian National Orchestra, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 06 October 2012Can two half-orchestras playing together ever be better than one well-established organism? The second and third concerts in yet another special project masterminded by Vladimir Jurowski, drawing together British and Russian perspectives on war and... Read more... |
Yuja Wang, Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 02 May 2012Let no one tell you that Chinese pianists can't play with passion. Yuja Wang ran the full gamut of emotions in last night's Queen Elizabeth Hall recital from the tender to the rhapsodic. But mostly she channelled her energies to delivering some of... Read more... |
Vengerov, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Temirkanov, Barbican HallSunday, 25 March 2012Originally, this concert was to open with that mercurial wonder Martha Argerich playing an unspecified piano concerto. Then its first item became Martha Argerich not playing anything, for the good lady, almost as rare a visitor to Britain as the Man... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Royal BalletSunday, 11 March 2012Better late than never. It took till Act 3 for a new Juliet to fledge her wings and shed the nervous caution, but Melissa Hamilton, debuting yesterday afternoon in probably the Royal Ballet’s most coveted ballerina role, suddenly did what we all... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: James MacMillan, American String Quartets and Music from the Machine AgeSaturday, 10 March 2012Miserere: Choral Music by James MacMillan The Sixteen/Christophers (Choro)Scots composer James MacMillan’s orchestral music has never convinced me, but this collection of a capella choral music is astonishingly accomplished. You can’t help... Read more... |
Jansen, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival HallThursday, 02 February 2012At last, a bag of sweets! In earlier concerts from Vladimir Jurowski’s LPO series Prokofiev: Man of the People? much time was spent consuming the composer’s flat soufflés, experimental rock cakes, or the fancy dish that was really haddock.... Read more... |
Blaumane, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal College of MusicSunday, 22 January 2012How do you solve a problem like Prokofiev? Not with a TV talent hunt promoted by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not even, I’m beginning to think, with the current London Philharmonic concert series, Prokofiev: Man of the People?, devised by Vladimir Jurowski... Read more... |