Classical Reviews
Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Nuova Musica, Bates, Wigmore Hall review - thrilling Handel at full throttleSaturday, 02 November 2024
Last time I saw the lovelorn Cyclops from Handel’s richly turbulent cantata, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, he was in a warehouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf earlier this year, posturing moodily as an Italian film director. The London Handel Festival’s specially commissioned Aci by the River seemed to have found the ideal form in which to explore this tale of thwarted desire for modern audiences; a dark tale of #MeToo woe in an alienated urban setting. Read more... |
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - Bruckner’s Ninth completedMonday, 28 October 2024
Kahchun Wong’s third Bridgewater Hall concert with the Hallé in his inaugural season as principal conductor consisted of just one work: Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9 – but not in the incomplete three-movement version that until quite recently has been the norm in Manchester (and elsewhere). Read more... |
The Orchestral Forest, Smith Square Hall review - living the orchestra from the insideSaturday, 26 October 2024
What’s it like to be in the middle of an orchestra, hugger-mugger with the violas, looking directly over the flautist’s shoulder? Last night’s immersive concert by Sinfonia Smith Square gave the us the chance to find out, the players spread around Smith Square Hall on podiums, with the audience encouraged to wander round as the performance unfolded. It was at once a revealing but also somewhat frustrating experience. Read more... |
Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Drumsheds review - surround-sound magic in the super-clubSaturday, 19 October 2024
Every lover of folk-tales knows that the seeker has to endure dangers and setbacks before they finally win the prize. Last night, the ever-enterprising Aurora Orchestra played The Firebird – Stravinsky’s own musical vision of the intrepid hero who outwits the forces of darkness – on a unique site that presents an audience with its own kind of ordeals. Once the Tottenham IKEA, Drumsheds has undergone a metamorphosis from super-store to super-club. Read more... |
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall review - warm and colourful Bartók and BrahmsSaturday, 19 October 2024
Last Monday my colleague Boyd Tonkin was delighted by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective’s playing at Hatfield House – and on Thursday it was my turn to be impressed by their colourful Wigmore Hall recital, which featured the marvellous clarinettist Carlos Ferreira in Bartók and Brahms. Read more... |
Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford review - an unforgettable recitalFriday, 18 October 2024
Christian Gerhaher, the most compelling and complete interpreter of German Lieder of our time, makes no secret of the fact that – unlike his devotion to, say, Schumann – his relationship with the songs of Brahms has never been comfortable. Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Sinfonia of London, Wilson, Barbican review - taking the roof off the BarbicanWednesday, 16 October 2024
A programme of less-loved siblings – Shostakovich’s gnarly Second Cello Concerto and Rachmaninov’s “not-the-Second” Symphony No. 1 – gave John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London the chance to do what they do best: force an audience to take a second look. Read more... |
Music from Pole to Pole, Clark, City of London Sinfonia, Smith Square Hall review - talk of clouds, music to matchWednesday, 16 October 2024
It’s not often that a classical music concert offers to take you beyond the stratosphere and back, but this intriguing evening from the City of London Sinfonia did precisely that with considerable élan. All too frequently there’s a considerable gap between a fantastic idea and its satisfying execution, yet this musical trip from the Antarctic to the Arctic via different cloud formations proved to be as stimulating as it was passionately engaging. Read more... |
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Hatfield House review - musical dreams in marble hallsMonday, 14 October 2024
“Sero sed serio”: so runs the Salisbury family motto on the carved coat-of-arms in the lavishly panelled and painted Marble Hall of Hatfield House. “Late, but in earnest”. The first adjective certainly doesn’t apply to any member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, five of whom performed in the Hall for one of the centrepiece events of the 13th Hatfield House Music Festival. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Arvo Pärt - Tabula RasaSunday, 13 October 2024
In 2022, Spritualized’s Jason Pierce described his musical goal as "trying to find somewhere between Arvo Pärt and The Stooges.” Amongst the most arresting and explicitly Pärt-styled results of this quest to link the minimalist composer with Iggy Pop‘s pre-punk confrontationists was the affecting "Broken Heart," from his band’s 1997 third album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. Read more... |
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