Sibelius
Classical CDs: Shipping lines, sabre dances and sea liceSaturday, 22 March 2025
Donizetti: Songs Vols. 3 & 4 Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Rizzi (piano) – Vol. 3, Marie-Nicole Lemieux (mezzo-soprano), Giulio Zappa (piano) – Vol. 4. (Opera Rara)“The songs Donizetti poured forth during his composing career have [..]... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Antiphons, ale dances and elvesSaturday, 11 January 2025
Paavo Järvi: The Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)Big box sets celebrating great conductors are piling up thick and fast, and this one, unusually, features an artist who’s very much alive. Paavo Järvi is just 62 (still young for a conductor).... Read more... |
Hough, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - where the wild things areFriday, 27 September 2024
This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along with reflections on the climate crisis as it threatens the traditional bonds between nature and culture.... Read more... |
LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - singular adventures for a new eraThursday, 12 September 2024
Somehow those of us required to translate the musical experience into words look for the moments which defeat us. One such was the extraordinary sound of muted first violins and cellos at the start of the second movement in Sibelius’s First Symphony... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Swans, hamlets and bossa novaSaturday, 27 April 2024
Chopin: Études op.10 & op.25 Yunchan Lim (Decca)Chopin Nicolas van Poucke (Night Dreamer)I’m reviewing these two Chopin discs by a pair of young men together, even though there are lots of differences between their playing, and the way the... Read more... |
Gillam, Hallé, Poska, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an experience of colour and funThursday, 21 March 2024
There was a common factor in the superficially disparate elements of this Hallé concert, and it wasn’t just the fact that both soloist and conductor were female. It was an experience of the colours of the music and a sense of enjoyment of what... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Herd girls, mojitos and mariachiSaturday, 10 February 2024
Paavo Berglund: The Warner Edition (Warner Classics)Jean Sibelius’s presence looms over this box like a friendly giant. Paavo Berglund (interestingly, one of the few left-handed conductors to have achieved international fame) recorded the... 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... |
Douglas, Estonian NSO, Elts, Cadogan Hall review - perfect ebb and flow from conductor and pianistThursday, 25 May 2023
Until last night, I’d only heard the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO at home, “Riiklik” standing for “National”) live in unfamiliar contemporary epics, with Kristiina Poska and Anu Tali respectively conducting Lepo Sumera’s Fourth and... Read more... |
Grosvenor, Kanneh-Mason, Park, Hallé, Stasevska, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the factors that make for a full houseSaturday, 20 May 2023
What makes a classical box office draw these days? If there were a simple answer to that question, a lot of concert givers would be laughing all the way to the bank.Is it recognisability – artists whose names are familiar from big-viewing TV events... Read more... |
LPO, Adès, RFH review - tempests and infernosThursday, 23 February 2023
I was really looking forward to hearing music from Thomas Adès’s ballet The Dante Project again, after being so excited by it at the Royal Ballet last year. By contrast, I was seriously disappointed by his opera of The Tempest in 2003, and hoped to... Read more... |
Total Immersion: Sibelius the Storyteller, Barbican review - a feast of sagas and psychic masterpiecesTuesday, 11 October 2022
If there’s a dud or a dullard among Sibelius’s 116 official opus numbers, I haven’t heard it. Yet catching even many of the outright masterpieces live in concert isn’t easy; the brevity that can show us a world in under 10 minutes makes some... Read more... |
- 1 of 11
- ››
