Schumann
Helen Charlston, Sholto Kynoch, Temple Church review - fine singing, powerful stage presenceThursday, 27 February 2025
Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston just gets better and better, both as singer and as actor. Last night’s recital at Temple Church had an unusual and wide-ranging programme – consisting of a first half hopping through the centuries, followed by a... Read more... |
Roman Rabinovich, Wigmore Hall review - full tone in four stylesTuesday, 19 November 2024
Is this the same Roman Rabinovich who drew harp-like delicacy from one of Chopin’s Pleyel pianos, and seeming authenticity from a 1790s grand which may have belonged to Haydn, both in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey? He clearly cares... Read more... |
First Person: Alexandra Dariescu on highlighting women at the Leeds International Piano CompetitionMonday, 09 September 2024
This year, I am delighted to be supporting the Alexandra Dariescu Award at the Leeds International Piano Competition for an outstanding performance of a work by a female composer. This marks a significant milestone in the 60-year history of The... Read more... |
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024 review - curator Steven Isserlis spotlights masterly Fauré and Saint-SaënsTuesday, 28 May 2024
“Saint-Saëns: The Renaissance Man” proclaimed the big screen at the first remarkable programme I attended within the 2024 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. The same epithet could be applied to this year’s curator, Steven Isserlis, so remarkable a... Read more... |
Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journeysTuesday, 30 April 2024
As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The founder-director (in 1990) of Bach Collegium Japan, a distinguished harpsichordist-organist as well as one... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Suits, serenades and flared trousersFriday, 13 October 2023
Bach: Goldberg Variations Víkingur Ólafsson (piano) (DG)Bach Goldberg Variations Reimagined Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque (Channel Classics)It feels like ages since I’ve listened to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I’m more team piano than team... Read more... |
Denk, Danish String Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - metaphysical strings, the piano as chameleonSaturday, 16 September 2023
Few pianists manage stylistic perfection in both Mozart and Ligeti, but to Jeremy Denk it seems to come naturally. We should have heard the riveting contrasts in quick first-half succession, but European air traffic control had wasted much of the... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Tambourines, multiphonics and hot chocolateSaturday, 02 September 2023
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... Read more... |
Prom 49: Schumann, Das Paradies und die Peri, LSO, Rattle review - knocking on heaven's doorWednesday, 23 August 2023
Have Proms audiences heard it all before? Not by the longest of chalks. Remarkably, last night saw the festival’s first outing for a major work by Robert Schumann.True, an extract from his secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri once reached the... Read more... |
Ilker Arcayürek, Malcolm Martineau, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 review - vocal tension saved by poetic pianismThursday, 10 August 2023
It’s an everyday story of festival folk. The festival’s Queen’s Hall concert on Wednesday morning was meant to be a song recital from Günther Groissböck, but he cancelled at (I’m told very) short notice due to illness and the festival team had to... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Nursery rhymes, anvils and polar explorersSaturday, 10 June 2023
Isata Kanneh-Mason: Childhood Tales (Decca)Ernst von Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song is one of the great concertante works for piano and orchestra, rightly compared to a full-scale concerto by soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason. You’ll... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Deserted churches, funeral marches and a Cornish lifeboatSaturday, 11 February 2023
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, Elgar: Introduction and Allegro etc Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos)John Wilson has done it again! He is, at breakneck speed, building an extraordinary catalogue of... Read more... |
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