Classical Reviews
Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle, RFH review - everything but inscapeThursday, 31 May 2018
Questions of interpretation apart, Simon Rattle has yet again proved the great connecter, this time in concerts separated by just over a month. Read more...
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Karen Cargill, Simon Lepper, Wigmore Hall review - opulence within boundsFriday, 25 May 2018
Singing satirist Anna Russell placed the French chanson in her category of songs for singers "with no voice but tremendous artistry". Mezzo Karen Cargill has tremendous artistry but also a very great voice indeed, a mysterious gift which makes her one in a thousand, and also rather good French (put that down to Scotland's "Auld Alliance, perhaps). Read more... |
The Rosenkavalier film, OAE, Paterson, QEH review - silent-era muddle expertly accompaniedFriday, 18 May 2018
Let's face it, Robert "Cabinet of Dr Caligari" Wiene's 1926 film loosely based on Strauss and Hofmannsthal's 1911 "comedy for music" is a mostly inartistic ramble. Historically, though, it proves fascinating. Read more... |
Chopin's Piano, Tiberghien, Kildea, Brighton Festival review - mumbled words, magical musicThursday, 17 May 2018
First the good news: Cédric Tiberghien, master of tone colour, lucidity and expressive intent, playing the 24 Chopin Preludes plus the Bach C major and the C minor Nocturne in the red-gold dragons' den of the Royal Pavilion's Music Room. Read more... |
BBC Young Musician 2018 Final, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - sky-high standardsMonday, 14 May 2018
The BBC Young Musician final was a big event in Birmingham. It drew a capacity audience to Symphony Hall, as enthusiastic, engaged and encouraging as any of the competitors could have wished. After the prodigious talent on show in the section finals, it was no surprise that the standards here were sky high. Read more... |
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, QEH review – taking Ligeti to extremesMonday, 14 May 2018
After Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s first concert in his weekend Ligeti festival at the Southbank, an innovative programme spanning influential contemporaries and new arrangements, this second was a more canonical affair: the three books of Piano Études presented in recital. Read more... |
Ligeti Chamber Music, QEH review - inventive celebration of iconic composerSaturday, 12 May 2018
The mini-festival of György Ligeti’s music this weekend at the Queen Elizabeth Hall kicked off with a concert of chamber music that moved from a monumental first half to a second that was a delightful unbroken sequence of miniatures. Read more... |
BBC NOW, Alexandre Bloch, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff review - tonal music in an avant-garde senseSaturday, 12 May 2018
This is the 50th Vale of Glamorgan Festival, and as its founder and director, John Metcalf, reminded us in a brief post-interval speech, he has been at all of them. Read more... |
Lucy Crowe, Anna Tilbrook, Wigmore Hall review - the eternal and ephemeral feminineSaturday, 05 May 2018
When you have 21 women to present in song, but only a couple among the 14 poets and none to represent them out of the 15 composers idolising or giving them a voice, you need two strong defenders of their sex at the helm. Read more... |
Pianist Christopher Glynn on Schubert in English: 'this new translation never walks on stilts'Saturday, 05 May 2018
The idea for a new translation of Schubert's Winterreise came from an old recording. Harry Plunket Greene was nearly 70 (and nearly voiceless) when he entered the studio in 1934 and sang "Der Leiermann," the final song of the cycle, in English (as "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man") into a closely-placed microphone. Read more... |
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