composers
Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sage Gateshead online review – a grab bag of players’ favouritesSaturday, 15 May 2021The Royal Northern Sinfonia handed its players artistic control of the programme for this livestream from the Sage, Gateshead and if the result lacked coherence it certainly had the variety and diversity missing from the Wigmore Hall Nash Ensemble... Read more... |
First Person: composer and Renaissance man Tunde Jegede on transcending genresWednesday, 28 April 2021In this era when there is so much talk and discussion around crossing musical boundaries, diversity in music and inter-disciplinary work it seems strange that there is still so little knowledge of how, why and when it works. Ironically, much of this... Read more... |
Gillam, Manchester Camerata, Kuusisto, Stoller Hall online review - calm and exhilarationMonday, 01 March 2021Manchester Camerata’s performance with Jess Gillam at Chetham’s School of Music was filmed in private on 9 January (and the sound was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 19th), but to see it in its full visual glory we had to wait until a one-off... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Marius Neset – TributesWednesday, 16 December 2020This year of all years – surely – we need music which takes us to better, happier places. And the new album from Norwegian-born saxophonist/composer Marius Neset does that. It also gives us a bit more hindsight and context as to what his two... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Osvaldo Golijov, Mendelssohn, Vaughan WilliamsSaturday, 21 November 2020Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out of Time Silkroad Ensemble (In a Circle Records)Along with many others, I was beguiled by DG’s recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Pasión Según San Marcos a decade ago, an exuberant Latin American take on Bach. After... Read more... |
Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology review - wild writing to stimulate the sensesWednesday, 28 October 2020Among the French composer Claude Debussy’s greatest and characteristically subtle innovations was to put the titles at the end of his pieces. He did this in his piano collection Preludes: the titles, trailed by ellipses and clothed in brackets... Read more... |
Max Richter's Sleep review - refreshing as a good night's restSaturday, 12 September 2020If there was ever a balm for these confusing times, then it’s Max Richter’s Sleep, a lullaby of a documentary that explores the composer’s eight-hour-plus experimental 2015 composition based on sleep cycles. Richter is a remarkable... Read more... |
Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)Tuesday, 31 March 2020No composer since Stravinsky has defined his age as comprehensively as Krzysztof Penderecki, who died on Sunday aged 86. Initially an uncompromising modernist, Penderecki was one of the composers who put Poland at the forefront of the musical avant-... Read more... |
Notes on a no-show - Nico MuhlyTuesday, 24 March 2020The following is adapted from a programme note for a show which was to have premiered last Thursday – the very day Sadler's Wells went dark. Nico Muhly – Drawn Lines was part of an occasional series featuring composers who are making an impact... Read more... |
Classic Albums: Tears for Fears, Songs From The Big Chair, BBC Four review - anatomy of an anthemSaturday, 15 February 2020Roland Orzabal, co-founder and lead guitarist of Tears for Fears, laughs to himself often during this documentary — the latest in the BBC’s often-excellent, always-forensic Classic Albums series. “I agree, I agree, it sounds great,” says Orzabal. He... Read more... |
Lenny Henry's Race Through Comedy, Gold review - illuminating account of TV's struggle to become multiculturalWednesday, 16 October 2019Sir Lenny Henry, PhD and CBE, is scarcely recognisable as the teenager who made his TV debut on New Faces in 1975. He’s been a stand-up comedian, musician and Shakespearean actor, and even wrote his own dramatised autobiography for BBC One.A... Read more... |
'A laboratory for everything': Jasper Parrott on the future of his classical music agencySaturday, 05 October 2019Fiftieth anniversary? It seems incredible but also so exhilarating not least because these times we live in now seem to me to be a golden age for music of all kinds and in particular for what we label so inadequately classical music. This flowering... Read more... |