Classical Reviews

Classical CDs Weekly: Turina, Rorem, Rhos Male Voice Choir

graham Rickson Friday, 04 July 2014

Jordi Savall, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Sebastian Scotney Tuesday, 24 June 2014

Jordi Savall has spent half a century combining instrumental performance on the viola da gamba with being the leader of ensembles of pioneering scholarship. Now in his early 70s, he has certainly had the recognition he deserves: a Grammy (he has made over a hundred albums), an honorary professorship (he has taught since 1974), and the Légion d'Honneur. These days he is also a prominent public figure supporting the “Catalunya should have the right to vote” campaign.

Crowd Out/Death Actually, Spitalfields Music Summer Festival

David Nice Sunday, 22 June 2014

“I feel so alone I could cry”. As the keynote of Adam Smallbone’s Passion in the breathtaking third series of Rev, that unspoken sentiment provided a passacaglia bass line to the failure of St Saviour’s.

De la Salle, LSO, Luisi, Barbican

Edward Seckerson Friday, 20 June 2014

It is not often we hear Bruckner’s colossal Eighth Symphony in its longer and far quirkier original version (1887 ed. Nowak) and when we do hear it in either of its two incarnations it invariably stands alone.

Owen Wingrave/ Pavel Haas Quartet, Aldeburgh Festival

David Nice Monday, 16 June 2014

What a red letter day it is when a work you’ve always thought of as problematic seems at last, if only temporarily, to have no kind of fault or flaw. That was the case for me on Sunday afternoon with Britten’s penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave, launching this year’s Aldeburgh Festival with an ideal cast fused as one with the young Britten-Pears Orchestra thanks to the self-evidently intensive collaboration of director Neil Bartlett and conductor Mark Wigglesworth.

Anna Prohaska, Eric Schneider, Wigmore Hall

Geoff Brown Sunday, 15 June 2014

Judging from the photos used to publicise Anna Prohaska’s new album – one of them is dancing merrily above this review – this gorgeously gifted soprano should have been singing this spin-off recital wearing an army great coat. She compromised with a severe black tunic and trousers with military references and a slight science-fiction cut: she could almost have been a futuristic soldier from the old Korda film Things to Come.

Gilchrist, Bevan, OAE, Devine, QEH

Geoff Brown Friday, 13 June 2014

Of all the epithets you could pin on that roast beef of Old England, William Boyce, “gamechanger” is one of the more unlikely. Like any good 18^th-century Englishman, this composer followed the widespread Italianate model of the late Baroque, infused it with Handel, and a swig or two of Purcell, and just got to work. Latterly he spent far too much time setting toadying odes for Britain’s Hanoverian kings; no chance for revolution there.

Classical CDs Weekly: Khachaturian, Shostakovich, Walton, Roman Mints

graham Rickson Saturday, 07 June 2014

Faust, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Haitink, Barbican

Kimon Daltas Thursday, 05 June 2014

In the year of his 85th birthday, and his 60th season as a conductor, Bernard Haitink is hardly taking it easy, with concerts with various orchestras around Europe and the US including an appearance at the Proms. In this visit to London with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe he may not have been bounding up the steps to the stage, but his powers with the baton remain undimmed.

Khatia Buniatishvili, Queen Elizabeth Hall

David Nice Thursday, 05 June 2014

A voluptuous dream in sequined silver, the nearly-27-year-old Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili sat down at the keyboard and instantly transcendentalised her mermaid look as Ravel’s Ondine. Even Brahms took to the life aquatic of her recital’s first half. For the second, though, there should have been a costume change into a clown suit with a tatty tutu pulled over it.