Classical Reviews
Choral Pilgrimage 2014, The Sixteen, St John's College Chapel, CambridgeSaturday, 22 March 2014
The core pulse of Tudor polyphony is often deliciously slow. It gets down to a mesmeric pace of about 30 beats per minute. The listener just has to succumb to it, and the experience, even in the virtually unheated Cambridge College chapel where The Sixteen began its 2014 Choral Pilgrimage last night, was pure pleasure. Read more... |
L'Arpeggiata, Wigmore HallSaturday, 22 March 2014
Turning every concert into a party, baroque ensemble L’Arpeggiata are performers in the truest sense. Too often early musicians get away with being shy or downright awkward, visibly uncomfortable when forced to introduce an encore. Not so with these European virtuosi, whose signature improvisations give each member (yes, even the percussionist) the chance to step into a starring role. And don’t get me started on the baroque rap that concluded the group’s most recent London concert… Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Prokofiev, Schubert, ZemlinskySaturday, 22 March 2014
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Organ Gala Launch Concert, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 19 March 2014
The newly restored Royal Festival Hall organ was inaugurated in a celebratory atmosphere with this gala launch concert, which also marks the beginning of the Pull Out All the Stops organ festival. Read more... |
St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Tilson Thomas, RFHSunday, 16 March 2014
A voyage around Beethoven by Ives and John Adams, and then beyond him by Berlioz, added up to a vintage San Francisco Symphony programme from its music director Michael Tilson Thomas. Forty years on from his first concert with SFS, he’s still youthful in demeanour, still flapping with seagull (or albatross) like flamboyancy. But is there a chill behind the showmanship? Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Alwyn, Sibelius, TenebraeFriday, 14 March 2014
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Villa Lobos: Total Immersion, BarbicanMonday, 10 March 2014
“This is not so much a total immersion, more of a quick shower,” said Simon Wright, biographer of Villa Lobos at the start of the day-long exploration of his music. With up to 1,500 works in existence – the exact number is unconfirmed – he promised we’d be “hacking our way through a tiny part of this immense jungle”, to use another metaphor that seems alarmingly appropriate with this composer. Read more... |
Martinpelto, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSunday, 09 March 2014
No one could accuse Manchester’s musical forces of short-changing Richard Strauss on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Under the title Strauss’s Voice, over two months three orchestras, eight conductors and a dozen soloists have delivered eleven concerts and several open rehearsals and talks. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Haydn, Weinberg, Battle for MusicSaturday, 08 March 2014
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Gabriela Montero, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 06 March 2014
Gabriela Montero stands out as different. She is an American-based improvising classical pianist of real quality. She has a courageous civil rights message to convey about the tragedy of unseen arrests and murders in her native Venezuela, but is nonetheless happy to take her curtain call draped in the colourful Venezuelan flag. Read more... |
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