Classical Reviews
Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Koenigs, St David's Hall, CardiffSaturday, 30 April 2011
Popping up on royal wedding day from the Niebelheim where they spend most of their working life, the WNO Orchestra brought with them a birth-and-death programme: hatch and dispatch, rather than match. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll was a thank-you present to Cosima for their baby son, born out of wedlock; Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony turned into an epitaph for Wagner when he died in 1883, though most of it was written while he was still alive but ailing.
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Classical CDs Weekly: Górecki, Haydn, Shostakovich, Second Viennese SchoolFriday, 29 April 2011
It’s string-quartet Saturday – a young German group tackle Soviet classics and a rejuvenated Russian quartet smile with Haydn. There’s music from a contemporary Polish master and exquisitely uncomfortable fin-de-siècle music from Vienna. Read more... |
London Schools Symphony Orchestra, Segerstam, Barbican HallThursday, 28 April 2011
With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's munificent wing. But last night was more than just another fun concert. Read more... |
Alexander Melnikov, Wigmore HallTuesday, 26 April 2011
How important is it to hear “the composer’s intentions” at a concert? Maybe only the interpreter’s intentions are possible. The young Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov challenges the golden rule of faithfulness to source with the resources of today’s piano - not the ropey old Soviet thing Shostakovich would have had, or the limited piano Schubert would have known, and last night at the Wigmore Hall delivered an ear-opener of a recital all about modern pianism at its most fascinating and... Read more... |
Rites: 3D, CBSO, Volkov, Royal Festival HallMonday, 25 April 2011
Were the great Diaghilev alive today, surely he’d be working in the imaginative possibilities of electronic technology - this was the opinion given me by the arts panjandrum, the late Sir John Drummond. And given the developments of 3D, who knows? Would it be this manipulation of our perceptions that fascinated him? 3D is certainly everywhere in dance now, though the challenge is to leap the judgment of it as merely a gimmick. I reckon while Wim Wenders’ film Pina 3D achieved... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Haydn, Gershwin, Ciccolini, SheherazadeFriday, 22 April 2011
Today we’ve Easter-themed music from Haydn and a rare chance to hear some delectable Grieg played by an old master. A kitsch Russian classic is given a new slant, and two Italians have serious fun with Gershwin. Read more... |
Cage 99, St George's BristolTuesday, 19 April 2011
John Cage, the focus of an adventurous three-day mini-festival in Bristol, is possibly one of the most influential figures in 20th-century culture. As much a practical philosopher as a composer of note, he made artists, writers and musicians think about the nature of chance, our place in nature and the role of the subject in the creative process. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Berg, Bruckner, SpolianskyFriday, 15 April 2011
This weekend's classical highlights comprise an eloquent tribute to a 20th-century master, entertaining cabaret songs from Weimar-era Berlin and some sublime Bruckner choral music recorded by an Edinburgh choir. Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Atherton, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 15 April 2011
The most interesting thing about Louis Andriessen's musical snapshot of the famous eroticist Anaïs Nin - being given its UK premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night - was that the scene on the chaise longue in which Nin (Cristina Zavalloni) simulates riding her father was nowhere near the most unsettling episode. |
Miloš Karadaglić, LPO Foyle Future Firsts, 100 ClubThursday, 14 April 2011
Bear with me while, like supergroomed rising star Miloš Karadaglić retuning his guitar to a mellower vein, I adjust my concert-hall vocab and describe this as a no-gimmicks sell-out gig underground with young musicians from the London Philharmonic’s Foyle Future Firsts scheme presenting two varied sets and Karadaglić headlining. And now I’ll just revert to old habits and declare the meat to be a slice of Classicism chromatically spiced (Mozart) and a 20th-century maverick pushing Neo-Baroque... Read more... |
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