Vienna Philharmonic
Bernard Haitink: The Enigmatic Maestro, BBC Two review - saying goodbye with BrucknerSunday, 27 September 2020
Before his retirement last summer at the age of 90, Bernard Haitink worked magic on the podium, no one is in any doubt about that. Lining up one friend and musician after another to admit they don’t know how he does it hardly seems the most... Read more... |
'Rehearsing Beethoven with Barenboim felt like an historical moment': Vienna Philharmonic trombonist Kelton Koch on a new normalMonday, 03 August 2020
Joining the Vienna Philharmonic as a student and young professional was an absolute thrill. I had begun to play with the orchestra as an academist in October 2019 and as a full-time member in the Opera in January 2020. I was experiencing many “... Read more... |
Prom 60: Ax, Vienna Philharmonic, Haitink review - moving mountains at 90Wednesday, 04 September 2019
His movements are minimal (perhaps they always were). A more intense flick of the baton, a sudden wider sweep of the expressive left hand, can help quicken a tempo, draw extra firepower from the players, but Bernard Haitink's conducting is still the... Read more... |
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Ádám Fischer, Barbican review - ferocious Mahler 9 without inscapeThursday, 21 February 2019
Give me some air! Stop screaming at me! Those are not exclamations I'd have anticipated from the prospect of a Vienna Philharmonic Mahler Ninth Symphony, least of all under the purposeful control of Ádám Fischer. Less well known here than his... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Debussy, Feldman, LanggaardSaturday, 09 February 2019
Et la lune descend – piano music by Claude Debussy Olga Stezhko (Palermo Classica)Olga Stezhko writes in her extended sleeve note of wanting “to look beyond the multifaceted beauty of Debussy’s piano pieces and bring out the edge and ambiguity... Read more... |
Prom 74: Ax, Vienna Philharmonic, Tilson Thomas review - elegance without passionSaturday, 09 September 2017
The Vienna Philharmonic makes a beautiful sound, no question about that: the question is what to do with it. Michael Tilson Thomas has some ideas, but they are mostly low-key. He is currently touring with the orchestra, and seems to have been chosen... Read more... |
Prom 72 review: Vienna Philharmonic, Harding - uncertain Mahler Six partly redeemed by brassFriday, 08 September 2017
Outlines of a real face had begun to emerge in Daniel Harding’s conducting personality. His youthful rise to the top initially yielded neutral concerts with the LSO and a glassy, overpraised recording of Mahler’s Tenth in the Deryck Cooke completion... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Antheil, Debussy, Hosokawa, SchmidtSaturday, 17 June 2017
Antheil: Symphonies 4 and 5, Over the Plains BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)American composer George Antheil boastfully described himself as the early 20th century’s "bad boy of music", though a few hours sent in the company of this... Read more... |
Prom 73: VPO, BychkovFriday, 11 September 2015
Every Proms season needs a late-romantic rarity to envelop its audience in a bewitching spider-web of sound. This year’s candidate was of more than passing interest, the incandescent Second Symphony of Franz Schmidt, scion of the Austrian Empire –... Read more... |
Karajan's Magic and Myth, BBC FourSaturday, 06 December 2014
There have been legendary conductors, and then there was Herbert von Karajan. He was a colossus of post-World War Two classical music, equipped with fearsome technical mastery allied to a vaguely supernatural gift for extracting exquisite sounds... Read more... |
Prom 74: Sonnleitner, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, MaazelSaturday, 07 September 2013
Tradition used to decree that the last Friday Prom would be devoted to worshipping Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. Not so today. Anything deemed serious and big occupies the slot, and if Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony isn’t serious and big, what do you... Read more... |
Vienna Philharmonic, Tilson Thomas, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 10 April 2013
When Schoenberg made his steroidal orchestration of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet he saw and heard what many don’t - that Brahms was more of a radical than the music world was ready to acknowledge, that he was not the conservative in the shadow of... Read more... |
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