Classical Features
theartsdesk at the Cottier Chamber ProjectSunday, 14 June 2015
The Cottier Chamber Project is coming to feel increasingly like Glasgow’s answer to the Proms. If the Proms took place in a former church high on shabby-chic charm, that is. And if they ran for just three weeks. And only covered chamber music. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bergen 2: Leif Ove Andsnes curatesMonday, 08 June 2015
If this were only the usual international festival – and it’s still a big “only” where Bergen’s flagship fortnight of theatre, dance, art and music is concerned – it might not be easy to justify swanning off to one of the most beautifully situated cities in the world. What drew me in the programme, though, were two unique and probably unrepeatable concerts put together by local boy made more than good Leif Ove Andsnes. Read more... |
Listed: Essential BBC PromsTuesday, 26 May 2015
Hottest tickets for seats at the Proms have probably all gone already. Yet the beauty of it is that so long as you start queueing early enough you can always get to hear the greatest, or rather the most popular, artists, for £5 in the Arena which is of course easily the best place to be acoustically in the notoriously unpredictable Royal Albert Hall. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dresden: Fire and IceSunday, 24 May 2015
Dresden is slowly opening up to the world. All but destroyed by British bombing in the Second World War, locked away inside Communist East Germany for 40 years, it is now becoming a tourist honeypot. On a warm day in May, you can see the snap-happy groups of Japanese and Germans trailing behind their guides, marvelling at the imposing Baroque buildings in the Old Town. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Thuringia: Easter with BachSunday, 12 April 2015
Sing, dance, breathe: those are the three imperatives for successful Bach performance, and three superlative interpretations at the Thuringia Bach Festival glorified them in excelsis. Read more... |
Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015): A virtuoso rememberedMonday, 30 March 2015
Ronald Stevenson, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, was a composer and pianist who will be much missed both in the small Borders village where he lived and by the much larger musical community in Scotland and beyond. As a composer he was unashamedly rooted in the late 19th Century tradition of intellectual pianism – in his music you can trace a line of descent from Bach to Liszt through his great hero Busoni. Read more... |
Building a Library: Living with SibeliusThursday, 19 March 2015
I’ve just spent five weeks in the company of a very austere and sometimes frightening masterpiece, Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, hearing a great many recordings of it for Building a Library, the abiding gem of Radio 3’s CD Review in which the critic takes the listener through the piece and chooses a front runner. Read more... |
Rattle for the LSO: great or just good news?Tuesday, 03 March 2015
Having manoeuvred to get a new concert hall for London earmarked in principle, Sir Simon Rattle has finally agreed, as we thought he would, to take charge of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Read more... |
Sci-Fi Week: Scoring the ImpossibleWednesday, 26 November 2014
Classical composers have always enjoyed depicting the implausible. Operas based on mythological subjects abound, creating near-impossible staging demands. Musical works based on science fiction are far rarer. Haydn's plodding opera Life on the Moon isn't one of his most scintillating works. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Stockholm: A Nobel Prize for Musical ExcellenceSunday, 12 October 2014
Should you not have caught one of the 20th century’s handful of greatest Wagnerian singers live - I did, just once, in a Prom of uneven excerpts - chances are that you first heard Birgit Nilsson in Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung on Sir Georg Solti’s Vienna Philharmonic Ring recording. Read more... |
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