Classical Reviews
Mørk, Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Festival HallFriday, 08 March 2013
Curious and curiouser. Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto, centrepiece of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s latest Philharmonia concert celebrating the Polish master’s centenary, adds ballast to the idea that the composer, like Schoenberg and Tippett, burrowed into a specially comfortless rabbit warren in his later works. On the other hand his Concerto for Orchestra, begun two decades earlier in 1950, proved its mettle as a serious audience-pleaser. Read more... |
The Tallis Scholars, St Paul's CathedralFriday, 08 March 2013
In November 1973 a 20-year-old music scholar from St. John’s College, Oxford conducted the first ever concert by the newly founded Tallis Scholars, in St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford. Anyone who was there might have sensed that a new era was beginning. David Munrow was still alive: the period instrument revolution was just taking off. Read more... |
Mitsuko Uchida, Royal Festival HallThursday, 07 March 2013
The magic usually descends quickly in a Mitsuko Uchida recital but the opening Bach of this rescheduled Festival Hall concert - a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Klavier - took a while to draw attention from the farthest reaches of this unfriendly recital space. Read more... |
Radio Rewrite, Royal Festival Hall: The Classical ReviewWednesday, 06 March 2013
Minimalism was born of popular music. The drones came from John Coltrane, the tape experiments from fiddling around with songs from the charts, the first rhythmic and melodic explorations from the folk music of Africa and Asia. And all the pioneers started their careers as jazzers (La Monte Young and Terry Jennings were saxophonists, Terry Riley a ragtime pianist, Steve Reich a drummer). Read more... |
Radio Rewrite, Royal Festival Hall: The Rock ReviewWednesday, 06 March 2013
Like a piece of conceptual art, it may be the idea rather than the actual music that is the most significant thing about the world premiere last night of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite. There will be a hundred times more people discussing the fact that Reich has taken on Radiohead than actually listening to it. Rather than variations, it's a 16-minute piece performed by the London Sinfonietta in which elements of a couple of Radiohead songs are referred to, often obliquely.... Read more... |
Worden, BBC Concert Orchestra, de Ridder, Queen Elizabeth HallMonday, 04 March 2013
Who’d have guessed a full house for the third of The Rest is Noise festival’s Berlin nights? This time there were no obvious superstars, unless you follow singer-songwriter Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and you know the impeccable track-record so far of young conductor André de Ridder. Read more... |
Members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Guests, Queen Elizabeth HallSaturday, 02 March 2013
While Liza Minnelli belted out hits from the 1972 film Cabaret next door at the Festival Hall, we in the Queen Elizabeth Hall were meant to be getting the real deal - echt 1920s Berliner Kabarett performed by Germans in German. German actors had been flown in. As had members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Awaiting us was an enticing line-up of Weill, Eisler, Hollaender, Heymann, Hindemith and Schoenberg. The raw, rambunctious Berliner night life beckoned. Read more... |
The Dark Side of the Moon: From a Classical PerspectiveThursday, 28 February 2013
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never listened to The Dark Side of the Moon until a few weeks ago. I’ve heard loads of other esoteric vintage pop, most of it terminally unfashionable and deeply obscure. Growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, I was vaguely aware that Pink Floyd had hit an uncool patch and the album passed me by. I’ve now made up for lost time. Through vintage speakers and scratchy second hand vinyl. Via weedy iPod headphones. Read more... |
Schiff, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth HallTuesday, 26 February 2013
You’d not expect Einstein to have daubed Amadeus’s Ninth Piano Concerto with the label “Mozart’s Eroica”. The really famous one didn’t : that piece of punditry came not from Albert the Great but Alfred the (musicologist) Lesser. Embarrassingly, the OAE’s publicity didn’t seem to know the difference. Read more... |
Wang, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dausgaard, Barbican HallSaturday, 23 February 2013
Orchestral volcanoes were erupting all over Europe around the year 1915. It was courageous enough to make a mountain chain out of three of them in a single concert. I was less prepared for the white-heat focus applied by that stalwart Dane Thomas Dausgaard, and completely flummoxed when he and Jian Wang, a cellist with the biggest yet most streamlined sound I’ve ever heard, made total sense of the only overblown monster on the programme, Bloch’s "Hebraic Rhapsody" Schelomo. Read more... |
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