Classical Reviews
Davislim, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSunday, 02 March 2014
It’s the thought that counts. That’s what we say about presents. But when the gift is a song by Richard Strauss it is that and more. He made a habit of gifting songs, particularly to his wife Pauline. Several of the Six Orchestral Songs on offer here, as the two-month Strauss’s Voice series marking the 150th anniversary of his birth nears its end, are taken from groups originally celebrating occasions such as their wedding day (10 September 1896). Read more...
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Repin, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Fedoseyev, RFHTuesday, 25 February 2014
Valery Gergiev once described Yevgeny Svetlanov’s USSR - later Russian - State Symphony Orchestra to me as “an orchestra with a voice”. Then Svetlanov died and the voice cracked. Which are the other big Russian personalities now? Gergiev’s own Mariinsky? I don’t hear it. Yuri Temirkanov can still bend the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra to his own whim of iron. The Russian National Orchestra was never in the running. Read more... |
Gerstein, LPO, Petrenko, RFHSaturday, 22 February 2014
Vasily Petrenko used his baton like a piratical rapier to galvanise the London Philharmonic violins in their flourishes of derring-do at the start of Berlioz’s Overture Le Corsaire. And the brilliance was in the quicksilver contrasts, the lightness and wit of inflection which lent a piquancy to the panache of this great concert opener. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Poulenc, Les Vents FrançaisSaturday, 22 February 2014
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Royal Northern Sinfonia, Bloch, The Sage GatesheadFriday, 21 February 2014
"The Sage Gateshead is in the top five best concert halls in the world." So thinks Lorin Maazel, and he should know. Attending concerts here is a real pleasure. The audiences are unfailingly friendly. The architecture is inspiring, and the views over the adjacent River Tyne spectacular. The main hall's acoustics are better than anything you'll find in London. Credit is due to a far-sighted Gateshead Council who paid for the building's construction. Read more... |
Cabell, RPO, Dutoit, Royal Festival HallThursday, 13 February 2014
This was the first of three Royal Festival Hall concerts during the first half of 2014 from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and its principal conductor Charles Dutoit, all three programmes consisting entirely of French music. The other two will be in May. In between the Swiss-born conductor, a sprightly 77-year-old, will have picked up a Lifetime Achievement gong at the International Classical Music Awards in Warsaw. Read more... |
Theodora, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican HallSunday, 09 February 2014
The Barbican’s ongoing season of baroque operas and oratorios has been a mixed bag. Most recently The Sixteen’s Jephtha was a rather lacklustre affair, leaving me nervous of committing to the many hours of Handel’s beautiful (but protracted) Theodora. But I needn’t have worried. Read more... |
Pires, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ticciati, Usher Hall, EdinburghFriday, 07 February 2014
This is more an excuse for celebration than a review. Six years after the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1974 – the birth year we were marking last night – I rolled up in a foggy Edinburgh one February day and chose it as my alma mater on the strength especially of one concert which showed what musical life in the city might be like: trumpeter John Wilbraham playing Bach and Handel with the SCO under Roderick Brydon. Read more... |
Schwanewilms, Hallé, Stenz, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterThursday, 06 February 2014
“How tired we are of travelling,” the soprano sings, underscored by a solo horn. The end is near: “Is this perhaps death?” No fuss, no drama, but weariness and a calm acceptance. Since Strauss and his wife Pauline were in their eighties and living quietly in Switzerland when he wrote Four Last Songs, it is clear that they had come to terms with their inevitable demise. Read more... |
Petite Messe Solennelle, BBC Singers, Brough, Milton CourtWednesday, 05 February 2014
“A little skill, a little heart, that’s all,” wrote the 70-year-old Rossini as epigraph to his late, not so small and not always solemn mass. It’s not all, of course. This last major self-styled “sin of old age” (péché de vieillesse) stands in a similar relation to his final, epic opera Guillaume Tell as Verdi’s Falstaff does to his Don Carlos. Read more... |
Beethoven: The Symphonies (And Reflections by Kancheli, Mochizuki, Pages
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