Stravinsky
Boyd Tonkin
We finished with a pure Hollywood moment when John Gilhooly – as Chair of the Royal Philharmonic Society – popped up after the warm applause to announce that the Society had awarded its gold medal to Vladimir Jurowski. Oddly, Covid rules meant that the actual handover took place backstage. So Jurowski leaves the London Philharmonic Orchestra after 14 years as principal conductor– to lead the Bavarian State Opera in Munich – armed with the gong formerly bestowed on Brahms, Barbirolli, Bernstein, Barenboim and Brendel (that’s just the Bs). Richly merited, of course, and last night’s farewell Read more ...
graham.rickson
Riccardo Muti – The Complete Warner Symphonic Recordings (Warner Classics)As with Warner Classics’s recent André Previn box set, begin at the end. Jon Tolansky’s audio documentary is on the last disc in this 91-CD box, chronicling Riccardo Muti’s galvanising effect on a moribund New Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1970s. Muti, aged 31, made his UK debut in December 1972 in Croydon’s Fairfield Hall; Tolansky recalls the rehearsals, and the fact that “within minutes it was vividly evident what he wanted and what he very quickly obtained: colour, nuance, contrast, character – and knife Read more ...
David Nice
Born in exigency at the end of the First World War and soon kiboshed by the Spanish flu, The Soldier’s Tale as originally conceived is a tricky hybrid to bring off. Not so the suite – Stravinsky’s mostly incidental-music numbers are unique and vivid from the off – but the whole story, based on a Russian folk tale about a simple man’s tricky dealings with Old Nick, is awkward, made impossibly complicated and preachy by the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. Huge kudos, then, to a vibrant translation (uncredited, alas) delivered by the Scottish actor Matthew McVarish, spreading himself Read more ...
graham.rickson
Stravinsky: Petrushka, Rossini/Respighi: La Boutique Fantastique Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko (Onyx)Stravinsky’s Petrushka is usually played in the 1947 revision, so it’s a pleasure to hear the 1911 original. The musical material is identical, though the later version’s sharp glitter is less apparent; this Petrushka looks back as much as it looks forward. Vasily Petrenko’s Liverpool recording is a triumph; it’s sharply played, neatly characterised and full of life. Think thick oil paint rather than neat line drawing. There’s a wealth of detail that emerges as Read more ...
peter.quinn
When Aaron Copland wrote his most beloved work, Appalachian Spring, in 1943/44, he gave it the unfussy working title of “Ballet for Martha” – Martha being the choreographer Martha Graham, for whom he’d written the score. It was only shortly before the premiere, long after the ink was dry on the score, that Graham appended the more alluring title, excerpted from Hart Crane’s poem "The Dance", by which the work is now known. At a birthday concert held in his honour at the Library of Congress in 1981, the composer noted with amusement how, due to the oft-repeated scenario of people telling him Read more ...
Nicky Spence
As patron for a community organisation, I see clearly how opera is the biggest collaboration going. Between stage, orchestra pit, school liaisons, chorus leaders, make-up bays and the magicians of the technical team, every cog is of equal importance. For the last 12 seasons, Blackheath Halls Community Opera has staged an opera each year, bringing together world class soloists and enthusiastic members of the local community who make up the orchestra and opera chorus. I really enjoy this further process of collaboration between professionals and members of the community.This takes an Read more ...
David Nice
Let’s start by echoing Simon Rattle’s sense of “how lucky we are”, in our case to be able to share with a 75-piece City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra its centenary to the very day, and celebrate the programme, the performers, the front man too (that superlative actor Adrian Lester, born in Birmingham to Jamaican immigrants). The overall presentation, alas, not so much. The welcome presence of Midlander Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist in Saint-Saëns' First Cello Concerto (pictured below) only reminded some of us how he was filmed playing the same work (don’t orchestras compare notes?), just Read more ...
Dancing at Dusk: A Moment with Pina Bausch’s 'The Rite of Spring' review - an explosive African rite
Jenny Gilbert
There’s sun and sand, and both are golden – but this is no holiday beach. Distantly, out of focus, you can make out a man with a donkey and cart. Off-camera, some locals kick a ball. A square of sand about the size of a tennis court has been carefully raked in preparation for a performance – a unique performance, as it turns out.Early this year, 38 dancers from 14 African countries were assembled to mount a production of The Rite of Spring in the 1975 landmark version by the late Pina Bausch. It was due to premiere in Dakar in mid-March followed by an international tour. But then lockdown Read more ...
graham.rickson
Korngold: Violin Concerto, String Sextet Andrew Haveron (violin), RTÉ Concert Orchestra/John Wilson, Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble (Chandos)Erich Korngold began writing his String Sextet in 1914, when he was just 17. Listeners immune to the pleasures of Korngold’s late Violin Concerto and Symphony in F Sharp might reconsider if they listened to the Sextet first. This is a big, four-movement work, technically brilliant and emotionally rich, largely devoid of the showy flamboyance that can thrill or irk in the orchestral works. Your attention is grabbed at the outset; it’s as if Read more ...
David Nice
One way to look at Stravinsky's celebrated collaboration with W H Auden and Chester Kallman is as a numbers opera in nine pictures, four of them indebted to Hogarth's series of paintings/prints. So it's not surprising that visual flair has marked out three significant productions: John Cox’s for Glyndebourne, “starring” David Hockney’s cross-hatched homage to Hogarth in 1975 and still going strong; Robert Lepage’s 1940s Hollywood tale in 2007; and, a decade later, this, Simon McBurney’s contemporary version first seen in Aix-en-Provence (but not so far in the UK, hence our gratitude to Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Concert programmes that set out to tell us a story can prove a mixed blessing. Yes, it’s valuable and stimulating to find ideas, and narratives, embodied in the musical flow. But great pieces, well-performed, have a habit of cutting loose from the frame of concepts someone has devised for them. At the Royal Festival Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia gathered three singular, idiosyncratic works under the rubric of “Voices of 1945”. No ordinary year, of course: immediately, the title primed us to listen for after-echoes – direct or oblique – of the conflict that had lately shattered Read more ...
David Nice
The megastars are here at the Barbican, for an intensive three days in the case of the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, throughout the season as the hall shines an "Artist Spotlight" on pianist Yuja Wang. Despite a shallow opener showcasing the individual talents of the Los Angeles principals and daft, rollicking Sousa at the end, there was a seriousness of intent and depth of focus that belied the touring glitz. The biggest miracle, perhaps, came in a three-minute encore from Wang - her third - but you couldn't fail to be deeply impressed by the execution of the rest.Just when you think you're Read more ...