Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
It’s not like we’re short of operas. Thousands of works spanning over 400 years make up the western operatic repertoire. Of these maybe 100 get a regular airing in contemporary opera houses, with only about 20 making it into the popular consciousness. For the rest, a trip outside the archives is rare indeed, with many scores still vainly awaiting their “modern premiere”. So why then, with so many works to choose from, do directors persist in returning to Bach – who famously never composed an opera – for inspiration? It’s a question that Jonathan Miller’s St Matthew Passion only partially Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms composed trios throughout his life - these well-loved pieces contrast with the much rarer works of Hans Gal and the oboist Heinz Holliger, here exposed in his parallel career as a composer.Brahms Piano Trios, Horn Trio, Clarinet Trio Soloists of Villa Musica (Covellio Classics)Brahms’s B Major Piano Trio was originally composed in 1859 but was drastically revised and republished in 1889. Writing to his publisher about the later version, the one generally played today, Brahms felt that “although the old version is bad, I do not maintain that the new one is good!” It’s a fascinating Read more ...
David Nice
Newly knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his services to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, American conductor and pianist Andrew Litton is a musician who believes in the nurturing of long-term orchestral relationships: eight years as music director in Bergen, with the contract recently extended to 2015, and an equal length of time before that in Dallas have reaped their rewards. In May he spoke to theartsdesk while visiting Berlin with "the other" BPO, and in August conducted a three-part Prom with the Royal Philharmonic featuring works written for Boston Symphony Orchestra Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Russians have always been particularly picky about the playing of the piano. Chief among the piano gods on the 20th century’s pantheon are Richter, Gilels, Horowitz - and even now names such as Ashkenazy, Kissin, Sokolov still elbow out many of the European and American names in the public consciousness. There remains a powerful mystique about Russian piano-playing. So when a young Irishman won the monumental Moscow Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1986 (in Soviet days), it was not expected. He was the first non-Russian to win outright since Van Cliburn in 1958.But Russians told Barry Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Pavel Novák is a composer I know something about because he has been much played by the Schubert Ensemble, who were for a time resident at Cardiff University, where I teach. But broadly speaking his music is virtually unknown in the UK. When William Howard played these 24 Preludes and Fugues in St Giles' Cripplegate four years ago, hardly anyone came to hear them – perhaps not surprisingly. Obscure Czech piano music in a chilly City church in December is hardly the most enticing prospect. But now that Howard has made a brilliant, compelling recording of this 75-minute cycle, its composer’s Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Stately females sailed the corridors like grand multicoloured liners. Grown men in boaters and Union Jack waistcoats raced balloons to the Royal Albert Hall ceiling. Beachballs. Streamers. Flags. Fancy dress. One St George's Cross read "Votes for Women!" My first thoughts were: how lovely, in a way, that the mentally ill are allowed a day out like this.It does strange things to you, does the Last Night. Most amazingly strange was what it did to Lang Lang. His performance of Liszt's First Piano Concerto lacked all the customary vulgarity. Technical precision was from the start giving Read more ...
Ismene Brown
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Actor Toby Jones, singer-songwriter Mara Carlyle, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and ballerina Bridgett Zehr discussed the challenge of turning work into performance and the moment of offering their artistry to the audience - their goals and inspirations, their best (and worst) performances, and their attitude to critics like us. We filmed the talk live, and below you can watch the event again as it happened, or you can read the Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week there's another new Mahler symphony recording, along with some disquieting British piano music and an enjoyable disc of originals and transcriptions played by a young Baltic accordionist.Frank Bridge – Piano Music Vol 3 Mark Bebbington (Somm)The bolder, more challenging pieces are the stand-outs in Mark Bebbington’s handsomely played and produced Frank Bridge recital – yet they’re sometimes curiously reticent to lodge in the memory. Bridge, still best remembered as the young Britten’s most influential teacher, possessed an acute sense of economy and scale – few of the miniatures on Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
After filing for bankruptcy earlier this year, the Philadelphia Orchestra seemed poised to be the flagship cultural casualty of the financial crisis. Five months on and the bills continue to rise, but in the best Titanic tradition the band are determinedly playing on. It’s been five years since we last heard them at the Proms and their return last night under Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit saw a capacity crowd turn out to show their support and to hear the glossy music-making for which this orchestra is so justly celebrated.For a partnership so synonymous with French repertoire, the Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk, or theartsdesk.com, is a website created in 2009 by leading British professional arts journalists and critics to offset the decline in supply of arts coverage in the print media where most of them worked. Launched on 9 September 2009, it publishes daily updating reviews, interviews and features by its member writers that aim to combine the best of print journalism standards with the speed, accessibility and technical opportunities of the web.Its particular strengths are overnight reviews of live plays, concerts and dance, in-depth Q&As with leading arts figures, weekly Read more ...
David Nice
I’ve noted before the lingering John Wilson effect on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whereby that pioneer of Hollywood-style authenticity always leaves the strings especially who play for him in good, vibrato-drenched shape for late-Romantic music. With good reason did Bridge’s relatively early (1906-07) Isabella, based on Keats’s celebrated tale of the fair Italian and the pot of basil in which she buries her murdered lover’s head, sound like a Korngold film score of the 1930s; after all, both Korngold and Bridge took their cue from Strauss’s symphonic poems.I’m sure David Robertson played his Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Earlier this year, conductor Manfred Honeck revealed to me his love of old vinyl: the crackle, the fizz, the lost musical traditions. His performances are marinated in this obsession. The idiosyncrasies of his interpretations hark back to a time when the rules were fewer and the colours brighter. Last night was no different. His Mahler Five steered clear of the sleep-inducing modern fixations with orchestral homogeneity and tastefulness and instead jumped right off the deep end.It was bracing stuff - not from the word go (these sort of lights need a fair bit of cranking up before they begin Read more ...