mon 23/12/2024

Classical Reviews

Faust, Tamestit, EBS, Gardiner, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - countless shades of brilliant

David Nice

Haydn and Mozart symphonies from John Eliot Gardiner and his English Baroque Soloists are bound, at the very least, to be high, lucid and bright. Last night the X-factor was there too, and trebled in a surely unsurpassable account of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra by two of the world’s most communicative soloists, Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit.

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Benedetti, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - essays in transparency

Robert Beale

Nicola Benedetti and Sir Mark Elder are both in the enviable position of being able to take audiences with them into music territory that might scare some away. So it was a gratifyingly near-capacity house that heard Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto last night as – on the first occasion they have worked together – they presented it to the Hallé audience.

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Mithras Trio, Wigmore Hall review - exhilarating, highly-toned performance

Rachel Halliburton

The adrenalin was in full flow yesterday lunchtime at the Wigmore Hall as the dynamic young Mithras Trio delivered a vigorous, toned performance featuring Beethoven, Bridge and an electrifying new work by Joy Lisney. The trio, who have been together for just over five years, are part of Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme and dispatched the repertoire with an intensity and expressive range that was often as beguiling as it was exhilarating.

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National Youth Orchestra, Bloch, Barbican review - blazing and surging odysseys

David Nice

In precarious times, musical wonders never seem to cease – for now, at least. Who would have thought during lockdown that we’d be back so soon and so frequently to the kind of massive orchestra needed to play a cosmic blockbuster like Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra? Of the three live performances I’ve heard since September 2021, last night’s, the biggest and youngest (160 players aged 14 to 19), was also the freshest and most exciting.

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Best of 2022: Classical music concerts

David Nice

While the call for livening up the concert format remains dubious – beyond unusual settings and a will to communicate, the rest is window-dressing – there’s always a special buzz about festival-like concatenations of events. For that reason, four one- or two-day chamber spectaculars have stood out for me this year.

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Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - conjuring spirits from solstitial darkness

David Nice

Quite apart from the stunning range of colours and phrasing, Pavel Kolesnikov’s recitals always give you much more than the programme promises. A golden thread through shorter pieces has been one approach, but here he did something different – sailed for the deep waters only in three chameleonic masterpieces, but suggested the connections by unveiling an unnamed work he asked us to listen to in “metaphorical darkness”.

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Dunedin Consort, Butt, Wigmore Hall review - Christmas glory in Venice and Dresden

Boyd Tonkin

St Mark’s shadow fell gloriously over the Wigmore Hall last night with a programme of Christmas music performed in, or inspired by, the great basilica of Venice.

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Bach Christmas Oratorio, Monteverdi Choir, EBS, Gardiner, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - soul-piercing song and dance

David Nice

Across three and a half decades, John Eliot Gardiner’s 1987 recording of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists spoiled one for live performances. Not that many of those weren’t equally fine and alive in different ways, but none I experienced gave us all six, equally glorious cantatas.

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Chasing the Night, Echo Vocal Ensemble and Friends, Latto, Kings Place review - midwinter songs from around the world

Bernard Hughes

At this of year there is always a good range of seasonal choral concerts on offer in London – and an audience for them all, weather and strikes permitting. But while I enjoy a canter through Carols for Choirs as much as anyone, I am perhaps more drawn to something offering some novelty.

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Bach Christmas Oratorio (Parts 1-3 & 6), Britten Sinfonia, Polyphony, Layton, Barbican review - glorious riposte to Arts Council axe

Boyd Tonkin

What do you do when your high-achieving ensemble has just been dealt a brutal, capricious blow, but you have the most joyfully festive work in the repertoire on your seasonal agenda? To say that the Britten Sinfonia came out with all trumpets (and timpani, and oboes d’amore) blazing would be the feeblest of understatements.

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