Classical Reviews

Leonskaja 70th Birthday Concert, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Monday, 23 November 2015

It was a massive but never overbearing three-parter, a three-and-a-half hour celebration, a mini-festival of youth and experience. Wouldn’t we all want to mark a major birthday in the company of friends of all ages?

Comment

Escaich, RSNO, Märkl, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Christopher Lambton Sunday, 22 November 2015

It does not seem like 12 years since the organ in the Usher Hall was restored to full working order. That may be because, in the minds of many Edinburghers, the recent years of untroubled service are still eclipsed by the many decades in which Norman and Beard’s monumental instrument sat silent, reproaching the City Fathers for their parsimony.

Classical CDs Weekly: Dvořak, Janáček, Schoenberg, Igor Levit

graham Rickson Saturday, 21 November 2015

Janáček: Sinfonietta, Dvořak: Symphony No.9 Anima Eterna Brugge/Jos van Immerseel (Alpha Classics)

In The Sky I Am Walking, Greengrassi Gallery

Peter Quantrill Saturday, 21 November 2015

Howard Blake fans, look away now. Am Himmel wandere Ich isn’t a back translation of the hit song from The Snowman. Though the Marxist-Adornist supporters of the party line at Darmstadt’s summer course of 1971 could hardly have thought less of Stockhausen’s song cycle when they heard it and then circulated a dismissive pamphlet. ‘Saint Stockhausen’, they called him.

Coles, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH

David Nice Friday, 20 November 2015

Great Estonian Neeme Järvi’s two conducting sons have had varying success in London this week. Kristjan did what he could with a dog’s dinner of a Britten Sinfonia programme on Wednesday night, while older brother Paavo presumably chose the three surefire masterpieces in his Philharmonia concert yesterday evening. The climax was Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, one of the greatest of the 20th century; certainly there’s none to cap its sheer physicality.

Gomez, Osborne, Britten Sinfonia, Järvi, Milton Court

David Nice Thursday, 19 November 2015

Don’t blame the players: they did their considerable best. But what could they hope to achieve with a programme in which six of the seven pieces were on a hiding to nowhere, or too short to have much of an impact? A sequence, what's more, in which platform rearrangements took longer than two of the pieces in the first half?

BCMG, Knussen, CBSO Centre Birmingham

Richard Bratby Monday, 16 November 2015

“The first section, following a short introduction, places a rhythmic sequence on its retrograde. The two layers are transposed independently (one going up, the other down) as the music progresses, and points of symmetry are highlighted when they occur”. No, me neither. Apparently Patrick Brennan’s Polly Roe also features a brief rhythmic quotation from Birtwistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum. More erudite ears may have been able to detect it.

Faust, RLPO, Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Glyn Môn Hughes Friday, 13 November 2015

Four years ago, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic embarked on a two-year project to play all the Mahler symphonic works over a couple of seasons. It was an ambitious project but it was one which, then, had hall staff dusting down the House Full signs and the queues for returns forming well before the first note was due to played.

Comment

Gerhaher, Huber, Wigmore Hall

Gavin Dixon Monday, 09 November 2015

Christian Gerhaher is a classy recitalist. His stage manner is debonair, his tailoring immaculate (although his hair can be unruly). His artistry focuses on key vocal virtues: directness of expression and beauty of tone. In this evening’s recital, an adventurous programme that switched between the Classical era and the Modern, that proved as valuable a combination in Schoenberg as it did in Beethoven.

RLPO, Koopman, Philharmonic Hall Liverpool

Glyn Môn Hughes Sunday, 08 November 2015

It was rather like a trip home to see long-lost relatives. Ton Koopman took to the stage at the Liverpool Philharmonic with a broad smile. That smile both greeted the audience and, from what the audience could see, told the orchestra that they were on form. Or, on the other hand, it might have been encouraging them to try harder.