Classical Reviews
CBSO, Volkov, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - Mahler goes BauhausFriday, 26 April 2019
Just over a decade ago it was predicted by those supposedly in the know that Ilan Volkov would succeed Sakari Oramo as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In the event, the gig went to Andris Nelsons, and it was probably for the best. Read more...
|
Mitten wir im Leben sind, De Keersmaeker, Queyras, Rosas, Sadler's Wells review - Bach-worthy geniusThursday, 25 April 2019
All Bach is dance, a teacher once told me. The justifiable exaggeration switched on a light; leaping to the Brandenburg Concertos followed. This great work of kinetic art is of a different order. Read more... |
Brockes-Passion, AAM, Egarr, Barbican review - fleshly Handel for our earthbound timesSaturday, 20 April 2019
Whips, scourges, sinews, blood and pus: where Bach’s two Passions lament from a contemplative distance, Handel’s plunges right to the bone, to the cruel, tortured death that is the heart of the Easter story. Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Ex Cathedra, Skidmore, Symphony Hall Birmingham - powerful, poignant BachSaturday, 20 April 2019
For the final instalment of their three Matthew Passions this Holy Week, Ex Cathedra gave a large scale performance of Bach’s oratorio in their home town on Birmingham, after dates with lesser forces in London and Bristol. Read more... |
Javier Perianes, QEH review - not a Spanish fire-eater but a world-class poetWednesday, 17 April 2019
Expect no cliches about toreador pianism. Red-earth flamboyance is not Javier Perianes' style, and the seven dances he offered in his programme - eight including an encore - by fellow Spaniard Manuel de Falla were not the most consistently engaging part of the recital. Read more... |
Philharmonia, Blomstedt, RFH review - gravity and graceMonday, 15 April 2019
Great conductors, like efficient auto engines, apply a lot of torque – they can use a little energy to achieve great surges of movement. Now aged 91, the American-born Swedish maestro Herbert Blomstedt sometimes hardly seems to raise his baton-free hands. His feet, meanwhile, remain more or less immobile. Read more... |
Ehnes, BBC Philharmonic, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - contrasts from the 1930sMonday, 15 April 2019
John Wilson conducted Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester just over a year ago with great success, in a programme of music from the 1940s. This time it was the very different, troubled Fourth, and the context was British composition. Read more... |
JACK Quartet, Wigmore Hall review – superlative Elliott Carter quartetsMonday, 08 April 2019
At Wigmore Hall the JACK Quartet presented the complete Elliott Carter string quartets in a single day – an astonishing feat given the scale and complexity of the music. Read more... |
Voces8, Cadogan Hall review – masterful madrigal singing and moreFriday, 05 April 2019
The vocal octet Voces8, approaching its 15th anniversary, is a purring musical machine: vocally top-notch, precisely and exhaustively rehearsed, imaginative in repertoire and equally at home in Monteverdi and Duke Ellington. And if the classical items grabbed me more than the kitsch swing numbers they ended with, there is no denying the whole concert was put together with panache and musical excellence. Read more... |
Judith, Royal Festival Hall review - a musical curiosity gets a rare airingThursday, 04 April 2019
If Gilbert and Sullivan did the Bible it would sound a lot like Hubert Parry’s Judith. Premiered in 1888 and last heard in London a year later, the oratorio – whose principal claim to fame is as the original home of tearjerker hymn tune Repton, better known as “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – has been lovingly restored to life by conductor William Vann and the English Song Festival, who will record it with Chandos later this year. Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 10,000 pieces, we're asking for £3.95 per month or £30 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take an annual subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
inside classical music
latest in today
Hatton Gardens, ITV, review - ancient burglars bore again
Have we passed peak Hatton Garden? It’s now four years since a gang of old lags pulled off the biggest...
Thatcher: A Very British Revolution, BBC Two review - demoli...
Is there some tongue-in-cheek irony in BBC Two...
Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic, Series 8 Finale review – who...
WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS! And so it’s over. Eight years of thrilling, fantastical, often emotionally devastating, in some senses ground-...
Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery review - naïve vulgarity and ot...
There's children screaming in a nearby playground. Their voices rise and fall, swell and drop. Interspersed silences fill with the sound of...
Sting and Shaggy, Roundhouse review - wilfully uncool and ir...
Musical odd couples don't come much stranger than Sting and Shaggy. Last night, at the...
La Damnation de Faust, Glyndebourne review – bleak and compe...
Mid-career, moving ever further away from composing for concert platform and church towards the stage,...
Gentleman Jack, BBC One review - the revolutionary life of A...
In 2010, Maxine Peake starred in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, but this new...
Cannes 2019: Too Old to Die Young - nightmarish LA noir
This year, Cannes has been adamantly defending traditional...
Rokia Traoré: Dream Mandé: Bamanan Djourou, Brighton Festiva...
Much of Rokia Traoré’s set on Saturday night comprised folk songs about...
What We Do In the Shadows, BBC Two review - black comedy vam...
This is a toothsome treat for Sunday nights and one of those rare occasions when the...