Classical Reviews
Emerson String Quartet, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 08 April 2011![]()
Could you get a more American string quartet than the Emersons? They dress like Yanks. They play like Yanks. They're even shaped like Yanks. There's Steve Martin on viola, Steve Buscemi on cello, Laurel and Hardy on violins. The night started in true Stateside fashion, an announcer indicating the Emersons would be conducting a Q&A session from the stage after the concert. I can't imagine anyone took them up on the offer. Because, for all the trials and tribulations of their recital...
Read more...
|
2001: A Space Odyssey with live score, Philharmonia, de Ridder, Royal Festival HallThursday, 07 April 2011![]()
Imagine a special two-hour-plus resurrection of that wannabe extravaganza Stars in Their Eyes. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, SackbutsSaturday, 02 April 2011This week, we’ve a Russian flavour – historic, idiomatic performances of Tchaikovsky symphonies, and exciting readings of Shostakovich piano concertos. And there’s a sackbut recital… Read more... |
Murray Perahia, Barbican HallWednesday, 30 March 2011![]()
Last night Murray Perahia played Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin, and we heard, quite simply, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin. Nothing more need be said, if one follows the Cordelia principle to love, and be silent. Read more... |
Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Uchida, QEHMonday, 28 March 2011![]()
There is always a moment after you've mauled a musician in review when guilt bubbles to the surface. Your inner nursery school teacher (the little voice that thinks potato prints deserve Nobel Prizes) starts tugging at your conscience. This spell of wussiness is invariably broken by the arrival of someone who shows you just what can be done when care and intelligence are applied to a performance.
Read more...
|
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, Usher Hall, EdinburghSaturday, 26 March 2011![]()
White-knuckle crescendos loom large in that greater-than-ever conductor Neeme Järvi's spruce Indian summer. Short-term bursts were the chief payoff in tackling Dvořák's deceptively simple-seeming Serenade for Strings with a huge department on all too little rehearsal time, but they also helped to pave the way for the two big events in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony: not just the infamous "invasion" sequence based on Ravel's Boléro, but above all the final slow burn. It was... Read more... |
Kavakos, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallWednesday, 23 March 2011![]()
Heavy-goods vehicles stacked with lamentations have been thundering through the Barbican Hall. Saturday's lugubrious Rachmaninov found a mid-20th-century counterpart last night in the tough elegies of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto - apt for a dedication to those affected by the Japanese earthquake. And the tottering juggernaut of not... Read more... |
Paul Lewis, Wigmore HallWednesday, 23 March 2011![]()
Paul Lewis doesn't smile much. He came to the keyboard last night with his face tuned to his usual blank-to-grim setting for the first recital in his Schubert cycle at the Wigmore Hall: a serious man with serious business. If only I could take his piano playing as seriously as he clearly thinks we should. |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov, Barbican HallSaturday, 19 March 2011![]()
What is it about Rachmaninov's ghost-train masterpiece The Bells and death? The BBC Symphony Orchestra last played it under the great Russian conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov, who used it as a valedictory gesture knowing he had only weeks to live. Yesterday Semyon Bychkov measured out the funeral knell of its harrowing finale with surely some thoughts of his brother and fellow conductor Yakov Kreizberg, who died on 15 March at the age of 51. Read more... |
Ax, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 19 March 2011![]()
Send in the clowns. Or at least that was Vladimir Jurowski’s musical thinking in bringing together the mighty foursome of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Haydn and Shostakovich and seeing just how far their capricious natures might take us. The allusions and parodies came thick and fast and just when you thought there was no more irony to tap, in came the most outrageous instance of misdirection in the history of 20th-century music: Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony. And that is no joke. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
![Angelic Upstarts at the time of 'Teenage Warning's' release. Second left: Mensi](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Angelic%20Upstarts_header_1000.jpg?itok=1v-5aO4q)
NME’s Paul Morley reviewed Angelic Upstarts’ debut album, the newly reissued Teenage Warning, in August 1979....
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Billie_Holiday.jpg?itok=bCSxbCxB)
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure.
In this fine, clear-eyed...
![Katharina Kastening: 'the underlying message regarding the danger in female stereotyping is one that unfortunately persists in our societies'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Carmen%201.jpeg?itok=Dat42NmJ)
Peter Brook's reimagining of Bizet's Carmen condenses the scale of the original into a more intimate theatrical experience. The score has...
![Kiiōtō's 'As Dust we Rise': Marianne Faithfull seems to be an unacknowledged presence](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Kii%C5%8Dt%C5%8D%20-%20As%20Dust%20We%20Rise.jpg?itok=LHVgNU9o)
As Dust we Rise ends with “Quilt,” a percussion-driven lamentation bringing to mind the New Orleans stylings of Dr. John. The album...
![A barn owl tracks a field mouse](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Oak%20owl.jpg?itok=SSl9kPEF)
On one level, Heart of an Oak is the most spectacular nature film you are ever likely to see. The camera glides over a forest before...
![Jack Wolfe and Cassie Levy in Next to Normal - at least one of them is keeping it real](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Next%20To%20Normal%20Jack%20Wolfe%20and%20Caissie%20Levy.jpg?itok=2AJfSPF3)
We open on one of those suburban American families we know so well from Eighties and Nineties sitcoms - they’re not quite Homer,...
![Embraceable you: Magalie Lépine-Blondeau as Sophia with her lover Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal)](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/dancing%20shot%20Nature%20of%20Love.jpeg?itok=E_cZDpf9)
The Nature of Love joins a recent spate of films where older...
![The city that never sleeps](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Anna%20Barclay%20header.jpg?itok=hgWnlrUS)
SUNDAY 30th June 2024
It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I...
![Cellist Zoë Martlew plays her own G-lude](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/July%2003%2C%202024_SM_NMCBirthdayConcert_Samples%20ZM.jpg?itok=jvirArQw)
NMC Recordings has spent 35 years promoting contemporary music by British composers, and this commitment to both emerging and established voices...