Classical Reviews
Classical CDs Weekly: Nicola Benedetti, Liszt, Thierry PécouSaturday, 27 October 2012![]()
|
Montgomery, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 26 October 2012![]()
It’s a sadness to all lovers of the French horn that Mozart’s four horn concertos, the product of his longest friendship, make their appearance all too rarely in the concert hall. Though the building blocks of the repertoire, perhaps their apparent frivolity counts against them. Read more... |
Hahn, LPO, Skrowaczewski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 25 October 2012![]()
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. That's quite a mouthful. Bruckner's symphonies can be too. But this is one of the reasons why Skrowaczewski has acquired quite a cult following for his Bruckner performances; it's why I once drove all the way to Zurich to hear him conduct one. His Bruckner is never offered as an indigestible slab of meat. It's never hard or chewy. Read more... |
Leopold Trio, BBCSO, Wigglesworth, Barbican HallSaturday, 20 October 2012![]()
The prospect of adventuring from one unpredictable day to the next in the course of Michael Tippett’s Triple Concerto, and from dawn to twilight in just over an hour’s orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring, seemed very much weighted in the English composer’s favour. Frankly, had Mark Wigglesworth only conducted Siegfried’s Funeral March in this concert’s second half, he would have consolidated an already glowing reputation as a top-notch Wagnerian. Read more... |
Theorin, Hallé, Stenz, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterFriday, 19 October 2012![]()
It is considerate of Manchester’s two professional symphony orchestras to have organised their opening Wagner celebration salvoes so that they dovetail so neatly. Read more... |
Weltethos: CBSO, Gardner, Royal Festival HallMonday, 08 October 2012![]()
The quest for the spiritual in the musical has been the dominant preoccupation of Jonathan Harvey’s since his earliest works. Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy has been an acknowledged influence on the composer, who has made a career of exploring what Steiner described as “the special character of the individual note”, which “expands into a melody and harmony leading straight into the world of the spirit”. Read more... |
War and Peace: Russian National Orchestra, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 06 October 2012![]()
Can two half-orchestras playing together ever be better than one well-established organism? The second and third concerts in yet another special project masterminded by Vladimir Jurowski, drawing together British and Russian perspectives on war and peace, proved that they could. It may have been disappointing to find the Russian National Orchestra on Thursday evening launching so cold-bloodedly into the feral start of Vaughan Williams’s Sixth Symphony. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: MacMillan, Mendelssohn, Stephen HoughSaturday, 06 October 2012![]()
|
Coote, BBCSO, Saraste, Barbican HallThursday, 04 October 2012![]()
Somehow the manic cry of “Scooby-Doo man!” from the back of the stalls didn’t seem too incongruous. We were in the thick of Shostakovich’s craziest symphony, the Fourth, composed in the mid 1930s when such maverick Russian talent was about to be stamped on and potentially quite a sledgehammer of a season opener for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Read more... |
Fretwork/Hilliard Ensemble, Wigmore HallWednesday, 03 October 2012![]()
“For if their musicke please in earthly things/How would it sound if strung with heavenly strings?” Listening to viol consort Fretwork last night, the audience at the Wigmore Hall didn’t have to imagine the answer to Gibbons’ question. Listening to the vitality and variety of tone colour this group so reliably produce, it’s hard to remember that this is ear(th)ly music – hardly the wan and consumptive sound so many people still stubbornly associate with viols. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

Emotions run high at WNO these days. When the company’s co-...

When Vladimir Jurowski returns to what used to be “his” London Philharmonic Orchestra, you’d better jump. I would have done on Wednesday had I...

The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of...

The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.”...

Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by...

Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught...

Igor Levit is a master of the unorthodox marathon, one he was happy to share last night with 24-year-old Austrian Lukas Sternath, his student in...

Is the theatre of the absurd dead? In today’s world, when cruel and crazy events happen almost daily, the idea that you can satirize daily life by...

Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he...