Strauss
Boyd Tonkin
These days British orchestras count themselves lucky if they can see, and plan, five years ahead. In Bavaria they do things rather differently. As the ducal court ensemble, and later the house band of the Munich opera, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester can trace its history back to 1523. Last night the BSO, as part of a six-country tour to mark its 500th anniversary, arrived at the Barbican with the first of two programmes conducted by music director Vladimir Jurowski.Their opening concert began with a hauntingly meditative work by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva; then the Read more ...
Guido Gärtner
Nine cities in seven countries; all in all, eleven concerts, on top of that, an appearance at home in Munich. Celebrating its 500th anniversary, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is currently on an extended journey. We have been looking forward with great anticipation to this tour during which we are aiming to present everything from our longstanding tradition that has stood the test of time and share it with a great number of music lovers throughout Europe.The Bayerisches Staatsorchester (Bavarian State Orchestra) can count itself lucky to be able to call the National Theatre in Munich home ( Read more ...
graham.rickson
Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4, Paganini Rhapsody Lukáš Vondráček, Prague Symphony Orchestra/Tomáš Brauner (Supraphon)Yuja Wang, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel (DG)Yet more Rachmaninov, but I’m not complaining, and comparing pianists Lukáš Vondráček and Yuja Wang in the composer’s five concertante works has been an enjoyable experience. Vondráček’s set was recorded between February and June 2021 in pandemic conditions, whereas Wang’s cycle was taped live over two weekends in February 2023. Vondráček favours broader tempi and plenty of introspection in Concertos 2 and 3, Read more ...
David Nice
Programming works from the same decade – in this case the 1940s – can reveal fascinating contrasts: what an impressive gulf, for instance, between two masterpieces by Hindemith and Strauss in this first half, and what sensitivity to very different styles from the NYOGB under Carlos Miguel Prieto. Be careful what you choose as the big symphony, though. I’d always had my doubts about Copland’s Third, and though it couldn’t have been more compellingly lit and shaped, it paled by comparison.Let’s get the elephant in the Royal Albert Hall room out first, for in every other respect, encores rich in Read more ...
David Nice
When tears well up during stretches of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s curious hybrid which you never expected to move you, something special's going on. The magic happened last night in an evening which I didn't anticipate equalling “the Carmelites experience” at Glyndebourne. But, in its very different way, it did, in terms of casting, conducting and a production (by Bruno Ravella) that wasn’t too interventionist but had some powerful ideas of its own.Any country-house production of this “let’s make an opera” charmer would seem to promise pure pleasure – what Brecht called “culinary opera”. But Read more ...
Robert Beale
An evening of “scenic orchestral works”, according to the programme booklet, was on offer from the BBC Philharmonic on Saturday. Scenic was certainly true of the Seven Early Songs of Alban Berg and Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. But Tom Coult’s Three Pieces That Disappear was something else.The high romantic word setting and vivid orchestral picture painting of Berg and Strauss are in familiar aesthetic modes: the music (and the words of nature poetry, in the Berg) animate your imagination, and something visual may well pop into your head, aided of course by the composer’s own descriptive Read more ...
David Nice
Silver rose, golden voices. Richard Strauss calls for four of the best: two sopranos and a mezzo for the love-triangle that develops between a 17-year-old Count, his 32-year-old lover and the girl he falls for at first sight; a bass as one of opera’s strongest if queasiest comic creations, Baron Ochs, Viennese Falstaff, debaucher of maidservants and country girls. Irish National Opera can now bask in the triumph of having cast three native singers of world-class calibre, and a German who sings as generously as he acts making his debut in a role he can now take all over the world.Bruno Ravella Read more ...
David Nice
So it turns out there isn’t a problem with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), a stroppy mock-epic I thought couldn’t ever love again, when constantly singing phrases from Antonio Pappano and the LSO turn it into an hallucinogenic opera for orchestra.It seems too good to be true that 10 days after a Philharmonia Don Juan to die for from Jakub Hrůša, who will take over from Pappano at the Royal Opera, along came another performance which felt legendary even as we listened. We have to hear way more Strauss from both great conductors.Perhaps not so much from Samuel Coleridge- Read more ...
David Nice
Salome was not to get her head on a silver platter: Jennifer Davis, due to sing the bloody final scene of Strauss’s opera, had been experiencing abdominal pains during her first pregnancy – mother and child are fine – and had to withdraw at a late stage. Yet Jakub Hrůša, witness to her potential in the Royal Opera revival of Wagner’s Lohengrin which led to his appointment as Pappano’s successor there, took the Philharmonia all the way in a still-dazzling programme.In fact this performance of the replacement work, Strauss’s Don Juan, a familiar test-piece of interpretative skills, would have Read more ...
David Nice
In precarious times, musical wonders never seem to cease – for now, at least. Who would have thought during lockdown that we’d be back so soon and so frequently to the kind of massive orchestra needed to play a cosmic blockbuster like Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra? Of the three live performances I’ve heard since September 2021, last night’s, the biggest and youngest (160 players aged 14 to 19), was also the freshest and most exciting.To hear young people in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain playing a supremely challenging work which used to be second nature to hardened Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Royal Northern College of Music is in the mood for celebration. Its 50 years of existence warrants popping the champagne corks big-time, so for its end-of-year operatic production Die Fledermaus is just what the doctor ordered.But this ain’t no ordinary Fledermaus. Forget the dreamy nostalgia of fin-de-siecle Vienna: the story’s ingeniously updated to set it in turn-of-millennium London – New Year’s Eve, 1999 – and it’s been given a nice bit of edge in the process. It’s conducted by David Parry, and his clever English translation is sung, with appropriately updated dialogue by Parry and Read more ...
Robert Beale
As Sir Mark Elder begins his penultimate season as music director of the Hallé, it’s clear that his command of, and communication with, the orchestra are as complete and purpose-driven as ever. It’s the first Thursday series concert of the new season, and at last a full set of concerts is in the offing, after three years of interruption and adaptation, but change is in the air.The orchestra’s new leader, Roberto Ruisi, takes his place and there are some guests in other principal roles as well. But this is still very much the orchestra Elder has moulded, with the sound he crafted and at least Read more ...