Classical Reviews

Music of Today - November: Sonica, HCMF, Oliver Knussen, the Arditti Quartet and Heiner Goebbels

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Sunday, 02 December 2012

Arditti String Quartet, Wigmore Hall, 31 October ****

November is always a good month for new music. This year saw the interest begin a day earlier. Whichever wag chose to hand over Halloween at the Wigmore Hall to two of the most uncompromising contemporary string quartets, however, was denied a fitting punchline. The young JACK Quartet were grounded in New York by Sandy, and the venerable Ardittis chose to programme works that weren't half as terrifying as hoped.

Comment

Classical CDs Weekly: Knussen, Weber, Alison Balsom

graham Rickson Saturday, 01 December 2012

Oliver Knussen: Violin Concerto etc Various artists/Oliver Knussen (NMC)

Kim, London Symphony Orchestra, Schuldt/Gardiner, Barbican Hall

Edward Seckerson Friday, 30 November 2012

Any young composer who finds himself at the opposite end of a programme from Walton’s First Symphony had better be good. Edward Nesbit - whose piece Parallels was commissioned by the LSO Panufnik Young Composer’s Scheme - is certainly that.

Kavakos, London Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov, Barbican Hall

Kimon Daltas Monday, 26 November 2012

Leonidas Kavakos was originally meant to be premiering a concerto by Argentinian composer Oswaldo Golijov, which had also been scheduled for Berlin in 2011 and subsequently for Los Angeles in May this year. The composer missed both those deadlines and the work apparently remains uncompleted – it was replaced on the programme by the Berg concerto.

Crabb, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hrůša, Barbican Hall

David Nice Sunday, 25 November 2012

There are always risks involved in the uncompromising side of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s family-friendly concerts. Succulent slices of fox-meat in the form of a suite from Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen gave the kids a nourishing start, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade was always going to seduce them with her effervescent narrative, especially given Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša’s youthful instincts to paint big, bold pictures.

Classical CDs Weekly: Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Eight Strings

graham Rickson Saturday, 24 November 2012

Prokofiev: Works for Violin Janine Jansen, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski, Boris Brovtsyn (violin) and Itamar Golan (piano) (Decca)

Coote, Britten Sinfonia, Shave, Hetherington, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Friday, 23 November 2012

Benjamin Britten would have been 99 on the day of this concert. He died aged 62, nearly six months after the premiere of a masterpiece, the 15-minute "dramatic cantata" Phaedra, ruthlessly sifting key speeches from Robert Lowell’s translation of Racine. The compression of inspired, marble-hewn ideas, the like of which few contemporary composers come anywhere near in operas of two hours’ length or more, places Phaedra on a pedestal.

Mørk, LPO, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice Thursday, 22 November 2012

Mozart and Wagner were the opposite compass points of Richard Strauss’s classical-romantic adventuring, and Amadeus has often made an airy companion to the rangy orchestral tone poems in the concert hall. By choosing Haydn instead as the clean limbed first-halfer in two London Philharmonic programmes, Yannick Nézet-Séguin came armed with period instrument experience of the master’s symphonies in his dazzling debut concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Evgeny Kissin, Barbican Hall

Ismene Brown Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Why is music? A child’s question, a great question. One answered by Evgeny Kissin’s piano recital at London’s Barbican Centre last night, where you might want to engage analysis and come up later with answers but what happened was that you left the concert hall feeling more alive, emotions retooled, spirit lightened, range widened. Music is because. Why else would Beethoven compose 32 piano sonatas? What possible purpose of Haydn to write 62 of them? Because.

Comment

Andreas Scholl, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 19 November 2012

It’s something of a fashion at the moment for countertenors to break out of the baroque, to have a bit of a fling with classical and even romantic repertoire. David Daniels has experimented with Berlioz, Philippe Jaroussky has flirted as only a Frenchman can with the mélodies of Massenet and Hahn, and now Andreas Scholl is embracing his native lieder.