Classical Reviews
William Christie, Les Arts Florissants, BarbicanFriday, 27 November 2009![]()
Thank God for Les Arts Florissants. Without the assiduous efforts of this pretty, chic French ensemble and its expat American conductor William Christie, one of the great periods in musical history, that of the French high baroque, would still be shrouded in darkness.
Read more...
|
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 26 November 2009![]()
J S Bach was very much at the spiritual centre of this cunningly devised programme for the South Bank’s current Alfred Schnittke fest: Between Two Worlds. But by the time we emerged shaken but, in my case, not stirred by Schnittke’s preposterous 3rd Symphony the entire Austro-German symphonic legacy had flashed before our ears. Well, not flashed exactly, rather ground to a halt from a slow rewind of ever diminishing returns. Read more... |
Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore HallMonday, 23 November 2009![]()
Elisabeth Leonskaja, who turned 64 on Sunday, is one of the last links to a grand school of Russian pianism where technique meant the marshalling of piano possibilities into a positively orchestral array of expressive means. Often noted in harness with Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she frequently played, Leonskaja deserves renown of her own. Read more... |
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 18 November 2009![]()
The Schnittke Festival kicked off on Sunday at the Royal College of Music with electric and bass guitars as part of the unwieldy ensemble. Lodged in the Royal Festival Hall last night, Vladimir Jurowski’s programming continued in the second concert with similar flair, but this time two 18th-century horns and two cors anglais were the odd ones out. We were back in 1764 and the early days of the symphony viewed through the prism of Joseph Haydn – every inch as much of an original as... Read more... |
Schnittke Festival, Jurowski, Royal College of MusicMonday, 16 November 2009![]()
Whether or not you rate Vladimir Jurowski among the top 10 hardest-working, most inspirational conductors in the business – I do – you have to award him the palm for enterprise. His passionate involvement in youth projects of various kinds, and a quest for innovative programming that would send most concert managements running, combined in the launch of his latest festival centred around the work of a single composer. Read more... |
Philharmonia Orchestra, Petrenko, Royal Festival HallFriday, 13 November 2009![]() It is quickly apparent when you are in the company of exceptional talent. In even the most hackneyed repertoire nothing is quite as you expect it to be: there’s a charge in the air, phrasings take on a different urgency, textures are opened up and newly revealed. And on this night, certain revelations concerning Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony were, under the exciting baton of Vasily Petrenko, no longer conjecture but irrefutable fact. Read more... |
Bryn Terfel, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 11 November 2009![]()
Bryn Terfel is a good guy. I know; he never forgets a face, and I’ve seen him making the tea for the entire team at a recording session – no one-off, they assured me. Yet the nature of the bass-baritone beast is given over to more villains than noble souls. The "bad boys" of opera and musical theatre are grist to Terfel’s satanic mill in his latest CD-linked tour. Read more... |
Angela Gheorghiu, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 10 November 2009![]()
The famously tempestuous Romanian soprano is, we learn, living a separate life from her husband Roberto Alagna. If Opera's Most Romantic Couple is no more, will Brand Angela be terminally damaged? Surely a showcase performance in the South Bank's International Voices season would be just the thing to rally the faithful and reaffirm Ms Gheorghiu's spectacular star quality, but I must admit that by the time we reached the interval, I was beset with gnawing doubt. Read more... |
LSO/Tilson Thomas, Goerne, Barbican HallSunday, 08 November 2009![]()
Michael Tilson Thomas’s association with the London Symphony Orchestra runs deep - he was its principal conductor for eight years, and for his latest return to his old band last night the American programmed works that, while they had a Viennese theme, also seemed vividly designed to show off the jewels of this great orchestra, its wonderful wind players. Read more... |
Maria di Rohan, Royal Festival HallSunday, 08 November 2009![]()
So many 19th-century opera plots park themselves on fertile historical ground, amid all the colour, character and juice you could ever want, and then spend three hours picking at some anaemic daisies at the edges. It was a worry last night as I watched Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan in concert at the Royal Festival Hall. By sidestepping the heavyweight power players of Louis XIII’s reign, the eminently operatic figures of Cardinal Richelieu (endlessly...
Read more...
|
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
![The Cryin’ Shames, c. September 1966 in their final incarnation as Paul & Ritchie & The Crying Shames](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Cryin%E2%80%99%20Shames%20Do%20The%20Strum_the%20cryin%20shames_Header_1000.jpg?itok=Y75fI_xH)
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...
![The statue of Smetana, born 200 years ago, presides over the main square of his native Litomyšl](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/1000021319.jpg?itok=j5ytrfbY)
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...
!['What! They're gonna release it?' Russell Crowe as Anthony Miller](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Crowe%20MAIN.jpg?itok=Z6xznrXN)
Helpfully, this is a film that reviews itself. Like it says on the posters, “They were making a cursed movie. They were warned not to. They should...
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Zara%20McFarlane%20Album%20Cover%20resize.jpg?itok=bOwUNyAa)
When Zara McFarlane sang the National Anthem at this year’s FA Cup Final, it served as a reminder of quite how adaptable she is, how suited so...
![Cruel intentions: Guards play human shuttlecock in Agnieszka Holland’s ‘Green Border’](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Green%20Border.jpg?itok=4bHlnH46)
We’re used to dabs of colour splashing briefly across black-and-white movies – Spielberg’s Schindler’s List or Coppola’s Rumble Fish...
![Rain Parade’s Steven Roback, caught as the musical mist engulfs him](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Rain%20Parade%20229_header_1000_simon%20godley.jpg?itok=sjprkj6w)
It kicks off with “No Easy Way Down.” First released on 1984’s mini-LP Explosions in the Glass Palace, it was an instant benchmark by...
![Footloose: Ryan Nolan and Lauren Waine in ‘The Bounds’.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/bounds1.jpg?itok=9te9BDC6)
Every day this week I’m watching a football match, and now – after April’s production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon’s Gunter...
![Cover art, for once, pretty much summing up the album's contents](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/lost035dd%20cover.jpg?itok=OiYwT3cZ)
Out on the perimeters where there are no stars, in a void full of bong-smoke and synesthetic noise… there, in a greasy biker hovel full of...
![Riders on the storm: Austin Butler and Jodie Comer](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Biker%20MAIN.jpg?itok=odI2Ch2_)
The best-known book about motorcycle gangs is Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, a classic foundational text of the so-called “New...