Classical Features
DVDs for Christmas: ClassicalWednesday, 14 December 2011
Unlike audio recordings, classical DVDs can only be properly taken in if you're sitting down for 80 minutes, ideally in the same seat. So they have to be pretty special to warrant repeated viewings. So much depends on the production and direction; how to make interesting the sight of a middle-aged bloke waving a stick at a sea of other middle-aged blokes, many of them looking as if they'd rather be somewhere else. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rome: Abbado, Shakespeare and Santa CeciliaSaturday, 26 November 2011
Many of Italy's artistic institutions may have tottered or crumbled during the Berlusconi years, and the more capable new man in the Palazzo Chigi can only offer painful sticking plaster, yet one major orchestra has never sounded better. Read more... |
The music man who kept them dogies rollin'Tuesday, 25 October 2011
On Thursday the London Symphony Orchestra plays a night of epic movie music by the man who gave America’s cowboy heroes their most stirring tunes. Dimitri Tiomkin was one of Hollywood’s film-score giants, John Wayne’s choice as composer for The Alamo, Wayne’s magnum opus, and Tiomkin's was the music that urged Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood to ride out in iconic glory in landmark adventures such as High Noon or Rawhide. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cologne: Mahler in the PhilharmonieSunday, 25 September 2011
Does any city in the world, apart from Edinburgh or Venice, offer a better point of arrival by train than Cologne? There, above the steel and glass of the Hauptbahnhof, tower the twin spires of one of northern Europe’s noblest cathedrals. Read more... |
theartsdesk Debate: The Art of PerformanceSaturday, 10 September 2011
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Reykjavík: Fanfare for the Harpa Concert HallSunday, 28 August 2011
After three days' motoring and clambering around the most awesome natural landscapes I've ever seen, how could a mere concert hall in a city the size of Cambridge begin to compare? Read more... |
ELF. Eales, Lee, Findon. Piano, Horn and... Flute?Friday, 19 August 2011
Some things just don’t seem to belong in a pairing. The flute and the French horn both have their distinct sonic personality. It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to suggest that the average listener tends to lean towards one or the other. Even Mozart wrote for the horn out of love but trotted out his flute compositions for money. But opposites can and do attract and so it once more proves in a new recording featuring the horn and the flute and, discreetly chaperoning the pair of them, the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: A Cable Car Named InspireSunday, 24 July 2011
I’m standing with my feet on peaks and my head in clouds, looking down steep Alps at the tiny chocolate-brown chalets of little Verbier way below on the green slopes. It’s ravishing up here on the top of Fontanet, and I tarry, gloating over the botanical riches around me of milky-blue gentians, royal-blue harebells, glistening edelweiss, dark little orchids and garnet-bright sedum, watching the trickling water of a brook, and replaying last night’s music in my head. Read more... |
Mendelssohn on Mull: Close-up with Chamber MusicWednesday, 13 July 2011
Getting to Mull is an improbably romantic journey to classical music-making. One can easily understand why Mendelssohn was so affected by his experiences in Scotland – and Mull. On the three-hour train journey from Glasgow one sheds the habits of everyday life: the train winds through thickets of Forestry Commission plantations, which suddenly open out into wild panoramas of mountains and lochs, or a dramatic ruined castle against the skyline. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cheltenham: Seven Concerts in Two DaysSunday, 10 July 2011
For so many days a year, Cheltenham's Regency symmetry and conservative values totter and buckle as they veer dangerously towards relative festive liberalism. As I sliced into one of the four annual beanfeasts, the Cheltenham Music Festival, it struck me how well lopsided, sometimes painful bendings of a classical framework by Schumann and Brahms sat with a battery of volatile percussion celebrating Steve Reich's 75th birthday. Read more... |
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