Classical Reviews

Skride, CBSO, Wellber, Symphony Hall Birmingham

Richard Bratby Friday, 06 November 2015

If Omer Meir Wellber is making a bid for Andris Nelsons’s old music directorship in Birmingham, he could hardly have signalled his intentions more audaciously. This concert began with Wagner’s Lohengrin Prelude and ended with Brahms’s First Symphony – basically a surgical strike into the heartlands of Nelsons’s repertoire.

Freddy Kempf, Cadogan Hall

David Nice Wednesday, 04 November 2015

London foists hard choices on concertgoers. Over at St John's Smith Square last night Nikolai Demidenko was giving a high-profile recital of Brahms and Prokofiev. But since the Prokofiev CD which has had the most impact in recent years has been Freddy Kempf’s, of the Second and Third Piano Concertos with the Bergen Philharmonic and Andrew Litton, a half-full Cadogan Hall seemed like the right place to be, even without Prokofiev on the programme.

Kovacevich, Argerich, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Tuesday, 03 November 2015

“People think when a person becomes old, he has to become serene,” declared that great pianist Claudio Arrau in his mid-seventies. “That’s absurd.

LPO, Skrowaczewski, RFH

Gavin Dixon Sunday, 01 November 2015

Stanisław Skrowaczewski has become a legend in his own, considerable, lifetime. From the ecstatic ovation as he took the stage, it seemed many were here just to see this iconic figure in the flesh. Fortunately, the performance of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony that followed fully justified the reception. The interpretation was vibrant and intuitive, with tempo and dynamic decisions seemingly coming from inside the music itself.

Sonica 2015, Glasgow

David Kettle Sunday, 01 November 2015

Sometimes it’s visual art with a sonic slant; sometimes it’s music with a visual slant. Glasgow’s Sonica – created by producers Cryptic, now in its third year and bigger than ever – feels like a thoroughly modern festival, defying genre boundaries and instead focusing squarely on the intersection of the sonic and the visual. That might make some of its offerings hard to categorise, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Classical CDs Weekly: Montanari, Sibelius, Stephen Kovacevich

graham Rickson Saturday, 31 October 2015

Montanari: Violin Concertos Johannes Pramsohler (violin and director), Ensemble Diderot (Audax Records)

Tchaikovsky Competition Winners Tour

Ismene Brown Friday, 30 October 2015

For a few very lucky competition winners there is a shopping trip where they are paraded around the world. A terrific opportunity, though a horrible experience, probably. Most competition winners have only a new line in their CV to stare at after the award ceremony, so the advantage of being a 2015 Tchaikovsky laureate, with a promise of an international tour with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, is self-evident.

Fröst, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, Barbican

Gavin Dixon Saturday, 24 October 2015

Final thoughts: a fitting theme for the farewell concert of this year’s Gewandhaus Barbican residency. But the connections proved tenuous: Death and Transfiguration, the gloomy opener, was written when Strauss was only 25, and the Mozart Clarinet Concerto which followed, while it was one of his last works, shows little concern for mortality or summation.

Tetzlaff, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, Barbican

David Nice Friday, 23 October 2015

In practice as well as in prospect, the second in Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss/Mozart trilogy was a concert of two very different halves.

Pires, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, Barbican

David Nice Wednesday, 21 October 2015

Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss odyssey with his Leipzig orchestra peaked in Saxony last year, the 150^th anniversary of the composer’s birth. I was lucky to catch a razor-sharp Till Eulenspiegel and a saturated Death and Transfiguration in Dresden’s Semperoper close to the birthday. 14 months on, and the Barbican has nothing like the same necessary air to offer around a mini-residency of richly-scored symphonic poems.