Classical Reviews
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester online review - re-consecration of the houseFriday, 04 December 2020
The Hallé have been slow off the mark, compared with some, in their response to the challenge of concert-giving in the Covid era. But now that they have delivered on the first of their winter season performances, it has clearly been worth the wait. Read more... |
Christine Rice, Julius Drake, Wigmore Hall review - songs of love and deathTuesday, 01 December 2020
It began as a Christmas present in the bleakest of winters. In December 1939, as war engulfed Europe, Bertolt Brecht sent a poem to the exiled Kurt Weill in New York. Weill set it as a bittersweet gift for his wife Lotte Lenya. “Nannas Lied” – the song of a an ageing, resilient, seen-it-all prostitute – tells us (via Brecht’s nod to François Villon) that the worst as well as the best never lasts forever: “Where are the tears we cried last night? Read more... |
Isata Kanneh-Mason, BBCSSO, Gourlay online review - give thanks for lockdown concertsMonday, 30 November 2020
As our friends across the pond celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, a mix of music from America kicked off the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert, opening with Massachusetts-born composer Carl Ruggles’s Angels for muted brass. Ruggles originally penned the work in 1920 as the second movement of a three-part piece entitled Men and Angels. Read more... |
Clayton, Frank-Gemmill, SCO, Kuusisto online review – small but beautifully formedFriday, 27 November 2020
After a brief interlude of concerts with a live audience, we are back to streamed events from empty halls (though many venues in London will be opening up again from next Thursday, concerts in Scotland have never opened up to the public). Some ensembles have opted to Read more... |
Má Vlast, Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov online review – finest silk for Velvet Revolution anniversary concertSaturday, 21 November 2020
It was Mahler as conductor who made the famous declaration that “Tradition ist Schlamperei” (sloppiness), or something along those lines. Read more... |
How Lonely Sits The City, Dunedin Consort online review - almost as good as being in the concert hallFriday, 20 November 2020
It’s hard to remember that distant time back in March before we were all digital experts, when the idea of watching a live-streamed performance was still novel and intriguing. Fast-forward eight months and serious screen-based fatigue has set in. Read more... |
Hutchings, Britten Sinfonia, Paterson, Barbican online review – saluting an American classicThursday, 19 November 2020
When Aaron Copland wrote his most beloved work, Appalachian Spring, in 1943/44, he gave it the unfussy working title of “Ballet for Martha” – Martha being the choreographer Martha Graham, for whom he’d written the score. It was only shortly before the premiere, long after the ink was dry on the score, that Graham appended the more alluring title, excerpted from Hart Crane’s poem "The Dance", by which the work is now known. Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla online review - muted celebrationsThursday, 19 November 2020
“This year was supposed to be so very different” said Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when he spoke to theartsdesk earlier this year. Talk about an understatement. The CBSO has hardly been alone in having cherished plans wrecked. Read more... |
City of London Sinfonia, Southwark Cathedral review – towards Haydn’s last symphonyWednesday, 18 November 2020
Nearly two weeks into the latest lockdown, and already I feel nostalgic about the last day of freedom. You should too, just watching the film released last night of the CLS’s most recent happening in Southwark Cathedral. Read more... |
Nicky Spence, Jess Dandy, Julius Drake, Wigmore Hall review – Moravian rhapsodyTuesday, 17 November 2020
We don’t often see sultry come-to-bed moves in the Wigmore Hall, that chaste Parthenon of refined musical taste. But when Jess Dandy stretched out languidly on stage while offering to show Nicky Spence “how the gypsies sleep”, the temperature shot up even in an empty auditorium. In Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared, wildness and passion war with inhibition and conformity. Read more... |
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