Classical music
Boris Giltburg
About a year ago, in a distant pre-pandemic world, I remember walking down Edgware Road one cold London evening. I was heading towards Jaques Samuel Pianos, my favourite haunt in London, to meet filmmaker Stewart French from Fly On The Wall. There, we began setting up mics and lights, (im)patiently waiting for everyone to leave, so that we could start filming the first of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, well into the early hours of the night. That was the launching point of a project I took upon myself – to learn and film all 32 sonatas throughout 2020, Beethoven’s 250 anniversary year.To Read more ...
Tunde Jegede
In this era when there is so much talk and discussion around crossing musical boundaries, diversity in music and inter-disciplinary work it seems strange that there is still so little knowledge of how, why and when it works. Ironically, much of this type of work and collaborative process is much older than we often think and give credit to.As a composer I have always been interested in this type of work because it speaks to my experience both socially and culturally. Having studied instruments and traditions in both the UK and West Africa, I was acutely aware from an early age of differences Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Wigmore Hall does not dish up a great deal of contemporary music, preferring a menu of mainstream chamber music. But this programme by the Nash Ensemble offered a different kind of mainstream: within the world of contemporary music this was a middle-of-the-road offering. A roster of composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Simon Holt and Mark-Antony Turnage, all at one time enfants terribles, now more les vieux terribles, made for a somewhat monochrome concert that was a bit indigestible, even for a modern music fan like me.And is it ok, in 2021, to have a programme like this, comprising Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Some lockdown-era recital programmes have doled out miserly short measures, as performers gallop through a brief, rushed hour (or less) of music as if afraid to tax the online patience of their disembodied audience. If this final concert in Leeds Lieder’s spring weekend of song had a fault, it lay on the opposite side: an abundant generosity that saw Dame Sarah Connolly and pianist, and festival director, Joseph Middleton pack a full-length bill (introduced by presenter Tom McKinney) with intensely flavoured major works almost to the limits of digestion – and then add some extras to the menu Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
What comes to mind when you think of Brian Elias? The violence and humming, background threat of The Judas Tree, his score for Kenneth MacMillan’s brutal final ballet? The outpouring of Electra Mourns, cor anglais a schizophrenic double for the mezzo’s monologue? Or perhaps his breakthrough 1984 Proms commission L’Eylah, a Middle Eastern love-song gradually revealed at its core?Elias’s output isn’t enormous, but there’s a real breadth within it. Thanks to a series of fine recordings on NMC, it’s easy to lose an afternoon in the British composer’s taut, carefully crafted music. But Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I Fagiolini do not just do choral concerts. Indeed, director Robert Hollingworth claimed in the pre-concert chat, he finds choral concerts boring. Instead what he and his group provide are experiences that go beyond straight recitals, bringing together elements of poetry, theatricality and unlikely juxtaposition, making old music sound new and allowing new music space to breathe alongside established classics.At Christmas I reviewed their contribution to an earlier Voces8 online festival, in which they combined Charpentier, Howells and Dylan Thomas. Also around the same time they released a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Joseph Lauber: Symphonies 1 and 2 Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn/Kaspar Zehnder (Schweizer Fonogramm)Two CDs from boutique Swiss label Schweizer Fonogramm have recently caught my ear. One presents a pair of symphonies by the long-lived Joseph Lauber (1864-1952), remembered, if at all, as Frank Martin’s composition teacher. Lauber wrote six symphonies, the scores of nos. 1 and 2 rescued from a Lausanne university library by Kaspar Zehnder and recorded last summer in Berne. As long as you’re not expecting Mahler or Bruckner, you’ll be delighted. Both symphonies are exactly as you’d Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
For their concert debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Gesualdo Six brought a programme of English motets for the final instalment in the venue's trio of Easter concerts. Having come together for a one-off project in 2014, singing Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday, this young, all-male ensemble found their vocal chemistry worked so well they carried on making music together. Though Gesualdo was absent from this performance, the works performed were all from around his time, opening with Orlando Gibbons’s "Come oh Holy Ghost".The group have a remarkable blend, Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder is back with the Hallé for the latest (and penultimate) filmed concert in their “Winter Season” of 2020 and 2021, including the world premiere of Huw Watkins' Second Symphony. He introduces it from the Bridgewater Hall foyer, and mentions plans for a six-concert summer series with audiences present in the hall – well, let’s hope so.There’s the usual “tuning up” brief clip of the busy streets of Manchester, and it’s straight into Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, with principal flute Amy Yule’s delightful solo, the harps of Marie Leenhardt and Eira Lynn Jones, and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Southbank Centre automatically stuck the trusty “Bohemian Rhapsodies” headline on this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert of Czech music streamed from the still-deserted Royal Festival Hall. Given Janáček’s presence on the bill, they should have made that “Moravian” as well. I know – get a life. Well, as we wait for that to begin properly once more, Marquee TV continue to bring high production values to their transmissions from the RFH.Sometimes, indeed, the team seems to takes undue, intrusive care. Directed by Nathan Prince, this gig featured too much moody blue and crimson lighting Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
I can’t deny that it’s great to be able to experience a recital by Benjamin Grosvenor live from the Barbican despite lockdown, streamed into your own home. The filming of this performance on Saturday night was superb, clear and well paced; we could see his hands up close, from a good variety of angles, and they are well worth seeing; and the coloured lighting was coordinated nicely with the music, for instance sea-turquoise for Ravel’s “Ondine”. Nonetheless, a certain heartbreak remains upon seeing the pianist adrift on a small platform constructed in the middle of the empty stalls, like a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Piano Concerto No. 4, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra/Lahav Shani (piano and conductor) (Warner Classics)Poor Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year saw most of the projected live events cancelled, but good new recordings have continued to appear. One reason for liking this one, performances aside, is the content; pairing a mature piano concerto with a late symphony makes for a satisfying concert in a handy package. Lahav Shani’s Beethoven is powerfully positive, the shadows having more impact because they contrast so strongly with the prevailing mood. Directing Read more ...