Classical Reviews
The Mighty Handful, ROH Orchestra, Pappano, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 09 February 2016
What fun it must have been to attend any of the St Petersburg Free Music School concerts during the second half of the 19th century. Read more... |
Fleming, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSaturday, 06 February 2016
Renée Fleming recently announced her imminent retirement from the opera stage. But she has no plans to stop performing, and will instead devote her time to recitals and concerts. Yesterday’s excellent performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra bodes well for her new career focus. And she’s not one to rest on her laurels, here giving UK premieres of two new works written for her voice, ever the adventurous artist, always playing to her strengths. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dutilleux, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Amy DicksonSaturday, 06 February 2016
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Kraggerud, Gimse, Wigmore HallWednesday, 03 February 2016
All three Grieg violin sonatas in a single recital may seem like too much of a good thing. The similarities between them outweigh the differences, which are more of quality than intent. But, when heard in chronological order, they provide a fascinating précis of Grieg’s artistic development, from the youthful and cheerfully unsophisticated First, through the terser and more tightly argued Second, to the Third, the composer’s undisputed masterpiece in the genre. Read more... |
Benedetti, CBSO, Shani, Saffron Hall, Saffron WaldenMonday, 01 February 2016
With Andris Nelsons now moved to pastures new, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is without a chief conductor, so for this performance in Saffron Walden (repeating a programme given in Birmingham) it worked with a guest at the podium, the young Israeli Lahav Shani. At only 27, he’s something of a prodigy, winner of the prestigious Bamberg competition and now making his debut appearances with the world’s great orchestras. Read more... |
Green Mass, LPO, Jurowski, RFHSunday, 31 January 2016
In recent performances of the First Symphony under Markus Stenz and the Seventh under Jaap van Zweden, the LPO have burnished their credentials as London’s best Beethoven orchestra. With the low-key oversight of Vladimir Jurowski, they took the Sixth to another level, perhaps the level at which the twentysomething tyro Berlioz heard the symphony and said, "I must write that for myself". And with the Symphonie fantastique, he did. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Debussy, Tippett, Heinz HolligerSaturday, 30 January 2016
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Dutilleux Centenary, BBC NOW, Rophé, CardiffFriday, 29 January 2016
The French composer Henri Dutilleux would have been 100 last Friday if he had lived that long, which in fact he very nearly did; he was 97 when he died in 2013. Five years before that he had been awarded an honorary doctorate at Cardiff University, amid pomp and ceremony and performances of several of his works. Read more... |
Gutman, LPO, Jurowski, RFHThursday, 28 January 2016
Risk-taking is what gives so many of Vladimir Jurowski's concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra their special savour. But did two risks for last night's programme pay off? I was as excited as many Russians and hardcore Russophiles at the rare visit of legendary 73-year-old cellist Natalia Gutman, and it could only be interesting to hear the little-heard, hour-long first version of Bruckner's Third Symphony. Read more... |
Van de Wiel, Philharmonia, Wilson, RFHMonday, 25 January 2016
Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, premiered in 1909, is from perhaps the last era in which pieces readily found favour with both critics and audiences alike. It launched Vaughan Williams’s reputation as a major national figure at the age of 38, and has become a favourite of choral societies ever since. But looking beyond its status as a choral warhorse, how does it hold up more than a century after it was written? Read more... |
Dutilleux: Le Loup, and other early works Vincent Le Texier (baritone), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS)
Debussy: Starry Night – Préludes Book 1 and Other Works Michael Lewin (piano) (Sono Luminus)Pages
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