Classical Reviews
Rice, Ridout, Drake / A Human Document, Oxford International Song Festival review - a cornucopia of song, speech and visionWednesday, 18 October 2023![]()
The word “great” is going to be stated, or implied, rather a lot here. Christine Rice is, after all, one of the world’s great mezzos, and her partnership with Julius Drake has long been something to seek out at every opportunity. Add to the mix a young viola player already in the top league, Timothy Ridout, and a programme featuring music by an individual voice among composers, Rebecca Clarke, and there was reason enough to travel to Oxford yesterday. Read more... |
Song of Songs, Pam Tanowitz/David Lang, Barbican Theatre review - sublime music and intricate dance bring life to a 2,000-year-old love poemMonday, 16 October 2023![]()
On the whole the Bible is not big on sex and sensuality, with the exception of one very short book in the Old Testament. The Song of Solomon – aka Song of Songs – is a hymn to carnal pleasure, one whose vivid descriptions of perfect flesh and brimming wine flagons have divided religious scholars for centuries. Read more... |
Bach B Minor Mass, SCO & Chorus, Egarr, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - smiling faces all roundSaturday, 14 October 2023![]()
As any good choral singer knows, you can’t deliver too emphatic a “k” for the opening Kyrie Eleison of any one of thousands of Mass settings. Well, almost. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus produced such a distinct, detached, and powerful opening consonant for this performance of Bach’s B minor Mass that it seemed to bounce several times round the auditorium before being enveloped by the great tide of chromaticism that characterises this magisterial movement. Read more... |
Songs of Wars I Have Seen, RSNO, Dunedin Consort, Slorach, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - moving portrayal of wartime diariesFriday, 13 October 2023![]()
Songs of Wars I Have Seen is an hour-long through=composed work by contemporary German composer Heiner Goebbels which combines the music of 17th century composer Matthew Locke, the text from the wartime diaries of American Jewish writer Gertude Stein and Goebbels’s own ingenious musical and dramatic ideas. Read more... |
Kopatchinskaja, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - dancing on the volcanoMonday, 09 October 2023
Poetry came an honourable second to sharp rhythms and lurid definition in this choreographic poem of a concert. You don’t get more tumultuous applause after an opener than with Ravel’s La Valse played like this. Vienna may have nearly collapsed after World War One, but the Scheherazade of Fazil Say’s 1001 Nights Violin Concerto lives to see a bright dawn, and Rachmaninov cries “Alliluya’ to whirling demons in his swansong Symphonic Dances. Read more... |
Kim, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the sound of brassMonday, 09 October 2023![]()
Ben Gernon’s relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has been a richly rewarding one over the close-on seven years since his appointment as their principal guest conductor began, and indeed subsequently. Read more... |
Skride, National Symphony Orchestra, Matheuz, National Concert Hall, Dublin - musical philosophies soarMonday, 09 October 2023![]()
Promising on paper, dazzling in practice: with a superlative soloist and conductor, this programme just soared on wings of philosophy-into-music. The spotlighting of NSO co-leader Elaine Clark provided another thread, from the opening chant of Linda Buckley‘s Fall Approaches through the keen dialogues with collegial Baiba Skride in Bernstein’s dazzling Serenade to the Viennese-waltz Dance Song of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Read more... |
Roomful of Teeth, Milton Court review - mellifluous minimalism with a mild mannerSunday, 08 October 2023![]()
If there’s a better name for a vocal group than Roomful of Teeth I have yet to come across it. But if it conjures up images of brash, in-your-face showbiz the reality couldn’t be more different. Read more... |
Degun, Scottish Ensemble, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - fusion of east and west, ancient and modernSaturday, 07 October 2023![]()
In a fusion of musical traditions both eastern and western, old and new, Scottish Ensemble were joined by virtuoso sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun for an evocative performance of Degun’s own work plus reimagined music by Terry Riley and Hildegard von Bingen at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall. Read more... |
Ruisi, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - returning to Ravel’s gloriesFriday, 06 October 2023![]()
Continuing the retrospective aspect of his final season as music director of the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder returned last night to Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the work with which he opened the orchestra’s 2014-15 Manchester series to such memorable effect. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
![Pekka Kuusisto and members of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in 'Concert Theatre DSCH'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/pekka%205.jpeg?itok=QZGBpU_9)
Lilac time in Oslo, a mini heatwave in June 2023, a dazzling Sunday morning the day after the darkness transfigured of Concert Theatre DSCH, the...
![Celine Dion: 'My voice was the conductor of my life'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Celine%20MAIN_0.jpeg?itok=UhWoPg4u)
It was 20 years ago that Celine Dion first experienced the muscle spasming which would eventually be diagnosed as Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS). She...
![Dear diary: Genevieve Gaunt in ‘The Marilyn Conspiracy’.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Marilyn1.jpg?itok=bmHSytgt)
The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the following year there is plenty of...
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/KOK%201.jpg?itok=2nvB-o7W)
Yorgos Lanthimos continues to navigate a highly distinctive, daring, one might even say sly path for himself. After attracting more mainstream...
![Live in 1974, Cluster exhibit their low-key approach to stagecraft. What is the brush for?](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Cluster_Live%201974_header_1000.jpg?itok=KzE4mkdM)
In 1974, two albums by German kosmiche musicians working with electronics became the first from the seedbed of what’d been dubbed...
![In the pink: Mean Girls Elèna Gyasi, Georgina Castle and Grace Mouat](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/2.%20Charlie%20Burn%20%28Cady%29%2C%20Ele%CC%80na%20Gyasi%20%28Gretchen%29%2C%20Georgina%20Castle%20%28Regina%29%2C%20Grace%20Mouat%20%28Karen%29%20and%20Elena%20Skye%20%28Janis%29.%20CREDIT%20Brinkhoff-Moegenburg.jpg?itok=9V15uqsd)
Nothing anybody over the age of 30 says about the new Mean Girls musical, spawn of Tina Fey’s witty script for the 2004 screen...
![Bethany Horak-Hallett's vivid Cherubino gets close to Samantha Clarke's peereless Countess](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Figaro-Website-Gallery-4.jpg?itok=g0_-fr3Z)
“Tradition is sloppiness,” Mahler the opera conductor is credited with saying. But in the case of old master John Cox’s long-serving Garsington...
It's a bold move by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to tackle Frances Hodgson Burnett's...
![Pleasing but familiar: Imagine Dragons sixth album 'Loom'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Imagine%20dragons%20loom.jpg?itok=DipgP3A3)
Having propelled to stardom with their debut album Night Visions back in 2012, the Nevada pop-rock giants Imagine Dragons have reigned...
![Nardus Williams and Elizabeth Kenny in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, visible to a fortunate few](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/tj6WvCZ7.jpeg?itok=eZE5y4Ln)
Behind this poignant, simple-seeming hour of music for soprano and lute(s) lay a spider-web of connections between outsiders in the City: rebels,...