Ravel
Trpčeski, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - flash and sparkleMonday, 10 June 2024
Edinburgh is lucky to get a lot of high quality musicians coming to perform, not least during the summer festival season, but the most high profile musical visitor to the city this weekend was none other than Taylor Swift. Everyone is talking about... Read more... |
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024 review - curator Steven Isserlis spotlights masterly Fauré and Saint-SaënsTuesday, 28 May 2024
“Saint-Saëns: The Renaissance Man” proclaimed the big screen at the first remarkable programme I attended within the 2024 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. The same epithet could be applied to this year’s curator, Steven Isserlis, so remarkable a... Read more... |
Daphnis et Chloé, Tenebrae, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - lighting up Ravel’s ‘choreographic symphony’Thursday, 11 April 2024
Antonio Pappano fervently believes that talking about music is a vital part of his communicative art, and nobody does it better. Given that the London Symphony Orchestra's enterprising Half Six Fix format is scheduled for an hour each time, and that... Read more... |
Elmore String Quartet, Kings Place review - impressive playing from an emerging groupTuesday, 09 April 2024
The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme that put music written by composers at a similarly early stage in their careers alongside another’s... Read more... |
Sánchez, National Symphony Orchestra, Martín, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - Spanish panacheSaturday, 24 February 2024
Ravel’s Boléro, however well you think you know it, usually wows in concert with its disconcerting mix of sensuality, fun and violence. Context can make it even more powerful: in this case as the culmination of NSO Chief Conductor Jaime Martín’s... Read more... |
Louise Alder & Friends, Wigmore Hall review - magic carpet rides with soprano, strings and woodwindMonday, 27 November 2023
Sometimes all the stars align in musical performance. There’s no soprano more alive to the expression of musical joy and rapture than Louise Alder, no composer more levitational in his strange later adventures than Fauré, no instrumentalists strings... Read more... |
Ruisi, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - returning to Ravel’s gloriesFriday, 06 October 2023
Continuing the retrospective aspect of his final season as music director of the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder returned last night to Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the work with which he opened the orchestra’s 2014-15 Manchester series to such memorable effect.... Read more... |
Wang, Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 review - sparkling concertos, bleak ShostakovichThursday, 24 August 2023
Every time I have heard Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, some wiseacre in the bar afterwards trots out the predictable joke that it’s a cheap concert as the pianist gets only half the fee. For all that this is obviously nonsense, most... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Microphones, Massachusetts and mountainsSaturday, 19 August 2023
Antal Doráti: The Mercury Masters – The Mono Recordings (Decca Eloquence)The great Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti (1906-1988) enjoyed a long and prolific recording career, stretching from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s. This beautifully... Read more... |
Hewitt, BBC Philharmonic, Davis, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the classical styleMonday, 13 February 2023
Two intriguing themes and two great guest artists were offered by the BBC Philharmonic to their Saturday night audience in the Bridgewater Hall: the themes were what “classicism” really is, and the variety of music inspired by (or written for) dance... Read more... |
Duval, Isserlis, Beatson, Fidelio Cafe review - in seventh heaven with the greatsWednesday, 24 August 2022
It feels like a decade, but only two and a bit years have passed since Steven Isserlis stepped out in front of a small but very much live audience at what was then the Fidelio Orchestra Cafe in July 2020. Three hundred or so Fidelio events later, he... Read more... |
Prom 27, Dinnerstein, National Youth Orchestra, Gourlay review - colour symphoniesMonday, 08 August 2022
Danny Elfman – the punk rocker-turned-film composer behind Batman, Spider-Man, Edward Scissorhands and The Simpsons – reports that he felt sceptical when first approached to write for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Why? Simply... Read more... |
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