Classical Reviews

Barenboim, Staatskapelle Berlin, Boulez, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice Monday, 13 June 2011

What next - Boulez and Daniel Barenboim in Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov? The two numbered Liszt concertos are probably as far as they're going to go in lacier romantic repertoire, and last night it didn't feel far enough to justify the predictable standing ovation.

CBSO, Rattle, Symphony Hall Birmingham

stephen Walsh Monday, 13 June 2011

There was a macabre irony at the heart of this final concert in the CBSO’s Mahler cycle in Symphony Hall. Everything was back to front. It started with a Resurrection and ended with a death. Like the universe, it began with a bang and ended, Eliot-fashion, with a whimper. And the Resurrection wasn’t even Mahler’s (that happened last month), but Messiaen’s: his Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, a work which reduces redemption to sounding brass and crashing gongs.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Schubert, Stravinsky

graham Rickson Friday, 10 June 2011

Thomas Zehetmair lays down his fiddle to conduct kindred spirits Schubert and Gál

A 20th-century Austrian symphony receives a memorable first recording, coupled with a witty, rarely played slice of Schubert. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony is heard in a powerful reading recorded in the Royal Festival Hall. And we’ve an intelligent, logical coupling of two ballets commissioned by Diaghilev.

Ingrid Fliter, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Wednesday, 08 June 2011

Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter has 'an engineer's feel of logistics, a circus entertainer's eye for variety and a bombardier's sense of timing'

We all make mistakes. I was absent for the start of Ingrid Fliter's Tempest sonata at her Queen Elizabeth Hall debut. Fliter was absent (mentally speaking) for much of the final movement of the Appassionata. The parts of Fliter's recital that we were both wholly present for, however, suggested she may well be as good a Beethovenian as she is a Chopinist.

110th Anniversary Gala 2, Wigmore Hall

David Nice Wednesday, 01 June 2011

Elgar in 1917, the year before he composed the Piano Quintet

Ghosts legendary and personal dog the nostalgic footsteps of Elgar's utterly characteristic late Piano Quintet - though who knew the old man had as much red blood in him as last night's world-class team managed to squeeze out? And circumstantial ghosts have often niggled during the little portion of the Wigmore Hall's century-and-a-decade history I've witnessed, namely the spectre of sweltering at the back behind rows of nodding heads seemingly as old as the hall itself. But there are also...

James Bowman, Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Saturday, 21 May 2011

The end of an era: James Bowman bids a gentle farewell to the London concert stage

The Wigmore Hall was full to capacity last night, its crowd gathered to pay homage to a great musician at the end of his career, and to discover the talents of a great musician at the very beginning of his. While Alfred Deller might have been the pioneer, breaking ground and awakening audiences to new possibilities, it was in the hands of James Bowman that the countertenor voice was revealed as more than an oddity or novelty, a thing of uniquely expressive and vulnerable beauty. Sharing his...

Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, CBSO, Ono, Symphony Hall Birmingham

David Nice Thursday, 19 May 2011

Kazushi Ono, a conductor whose poise between rhythmic rigour and late-Romantic phrasing is a joy to watch

Gustav Mahler died, according to his wife Alma’s memoirs, at midnight on 18 May, 1911. Anyone mystically inclined to connect noughts and "o"s – you see it crossed my mind – might find some spooky link between 00:00 (pedantically, the time of death was 23:05) and the fact that, for this centenary concert, indisposed conductor OramO (Sakari) was belatedly replaced by OnO (Kazushi). What transpired was delight – near-delirium, in fact – that a supreme master had total control of the composer’s...

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Lang Lang, Royal Festival Hall

Ismene Brown Wednesday, 18 May 2011

There must be at least 100 more interesting pianists in the concert world than Lang Lang, but perhaps he is just the best publicist around, because nothing else can explain why such a vacuous display as he gave last night at the Royal Festival Hall could bring a standing ovation. Most of the evening felt like being on a plushly cushioned chintz sofa with Tinkerbell, listening to Bach, Schubert and Chopin being served as a cream tea. Lang Lang Inspires is the slogan at the Southbank...

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Gabriel Prokofiev: Nonclassical Directions, LSO St Luke's

alexandra Coghlan Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Gabriel Prokofiev: Creativity, risk-taking and just a few teething problems

In a week in which the nation has debated the relevance of classical music, it was left to the LSO’s Eclectica concert series to have the final word. Incorporating world and electronic music alongside traditional chamber works and contemporary programmes, Eclectica’s concerts offer dressed-down, laid-back forays down the roads less travelled of the...

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff

stephen Walsh Thursday, 12 May 2011

David Atherton: Excellent, undemonstrative

It’s a neat-sounding idea for a concert: a sequence of works composed in the year the previous composer died. Neat, but not necessarily revealing. This one started with Elgar’s Cockaigne, composed – symbolically, I assume – in 1900, and ended with Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, completed in 1934, the year of Elgar’s death. In between came Britten’s Nocturne, written in VW’s last year, 1958. With a little more time, they might have added Birtwistle’s Melancolia...
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