Classical music
Robert Beale
No one worried about melting icecaps and homeless penguins when Vaughan Williams wrote his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic around 70 years ago. (They do now, as a new music theatre piece by Laura Bowler to be premiered by Manchester Camerata next week will show). It was the challenge of the frozen continent and a heroic effort to reach its heart that counted.The film, starring John Mills, tells the story of Captain Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912, which ended in the deaths of all his team. Vaughan Williams provided music depicting tragedy amid the icy wastes with Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Endellion Quartet first rehearsed on 20 January 1979, deep in the throes of Britain’s so-called “Winter of Discontent”. That longevity – with three of the original players still on the team after four decades – makes the acclaimed ensemble roughly as old as Spandau Ballet, and senior to REM. While fashions in pop, and indeed politics, may change with the seasons, the quartet has matured and developed without losing touch with the qualities of sensitivity and solidarity that still make for so many exemplary performances.At 40, they now match the greatest age attained by the Amadeus Quartet Read more ...
Robert Beale
In contrast to a classic film soundtrack played live with the film, the idea in "symphonic cinema" is that the music, and its interpretation, come first. So the conductor is literally setting the pace, and to some extent the atmosphere, while the film is controlled in real time by an "image soloist", and the visuals follow the music’s lead rather than the other way round.It’s the brainchild of Lucas van Woerkum, who is that soloist, appearing on stage next to the rostrum like a concerto virtuoso, with a touchscreen as his instrument, and taking his bows alongside the maestro – in this case Read more ...
David Nice
Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Anna Þorvaldsdóttir: three names on quite a list I reeled off earlier this week when someone asked me why the compositions of Rebecca Saunders, in the news for winning the €250,000 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, make me lose the will to live, and whom I’d choose instead. Saunders gets a look-in at the very end of this Kings Place year of music by women, Venus Unwrapped, so I'll just have to try again. Meanwhile the first three, communicators all - as Saunders is not, for me - kicked off Bang on a Can's affably presented gallimaufry celebrating 27 years of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mia Brentano’s Hidden Sea – 20 Songs for 2 Pianos Benyamin Nuss & Max Nyberg (pianos) (Mons Records)Hiddensee is a car-free German island in the Baltic Sea. It's mentioned as one possible inspiration for the pieces on this beguiling disc; this music exists in its own prelapsarian world. There are allusions to Gershwin and, allegedly, Barbra Streisand, though the popular influences are treated in sophisticated ways. These pieces also sound incredibly difficult to play, Brentano suggesting that these songs without words need classically trained pianists to do them justice. “Early Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The big news on this programme was Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande. This early score, completed in 1903, is a sprawling Expressionist tone poem, making explicit all the passions in Maeterlinck’s play that Debussy only implies. The story plays out through a handful of chromatically complex Leitmotifs, but such technical considerations are soon overwhelmed by the sheer urgency of the musical drama.The piece is a rarity in concert, unsurprisingly given the immense demands it makes on the orchestra, so this performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra was particularly welcome. Conductor Ryan Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As the January chill began to bite around the Barbican, Sir Mark Elder and the Britten Sinfonia summoned memories of spring and summer – but of sunny seasons overshadowed by the electric crackle of storms. On the face of it, they offered us a pleasing, even serene, pastoral spread to mitigate the chill outside. It began with Britten’s late folk-song suite and continued through early Mahler songs to conclude with Brahms’s bucolic Second: one of the cycle of Brahms symphonies that Elder launched last year with this tight-knit and fine-toned ensemble. Although Elder – whose unfussy authority Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As Wigmore Hall audiences really ought to know, silence can be golden. Especially at the close of Schubert’s Winterreise, as the uncanny drone-like fifths of the hurdy-gurdy in “Der Leiermann” fade away into – well, whatever state of mind the singer and pianist have together managed to communicate over the preceding 24 songs. So much remains ambiguous – and open to plausible re-interpretation – in this cycle that the traditional pause for reflection as it ends makes good sense. Last night, however, the star (even, perhaps, cult) status of the German Lieder virtuoso Christian Gerhaher Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony: few other conductors could get away with programming two such monolithic works, but Simon Rattle has a lightness of touch that can leaven even the weightiest musical utterances. Bartók dances, Bruckner sings. It’s a quality that he communicates easily to the players of the LSO, who responded with vibrant rhythms and clean, transparent textures.When arranged around the piano, celesta and harp, the LSO strings comfortably fill the Barbican stage, making for large-scale Bartók. But the precision of the ensemble, as Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Most classical concert reviews focus on prominent orchestras and opera companies at major venues. But beyond the likes of the Barbican and the Royal Opera House, there are whole strata of musical life where smaller scale ensembles and amateur choirs provide a vital live music experience in less exalted venues.The Conway Hall in London is one such venue, whose offering goes beyond music – it embraces art, lectures, community events and even monthly atheist "services" – but whose main hall has a pleasant acoustic for its regular Sunday concerts.Last Sunday’s was given by the Fibonacci Sequence Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When three of the planet’s starriest soloists take the time to celebrate the anniversary of a young, non-metropolitan orchestra, it may seem perverse to leave the hall entranced most by the one work in which the illustrious trio played no part. Of course it was grand, and gratifying, to see Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov and Martha Argerich – yes, Martha Argerich – turn out yesterday for the 20th birthday party of the Oxford Philharmonic at the Barbican. Marios Papadopoulos, who founded the ensemble and conducted it last night, has fashioned an outfit that deserves to command that stellar Read more ...
graham.rickson
Joe Cutler: Elsewhereness (NMC)The titles drew me in. Karembeu’s Guide to the Complete Defensive Midfielder is a great name for a piece, Joe Cutler tangentially inspired by the great French footballer’s passing skills to create a brilliant ten-minute work for saxophone and jazz group. Players jostle, separate and regroup before a solemn, imposing coda. And, having just read about actor Dominic West’s performance in BBC1’s Les Miserables, it's cool to learn that Cutler's Irish-tinged piano trio McNulty does actually have links to West’s troubled character in The Wire. The music’s Read more ...