Classical music
graham.rickson
Chopin: Études Sonya Bach (piano) (Rubicon)Chopin’s solo piano études helped push the genre into uncharted territory. He would have practiced examples by Czerny and Clementi in his youth, but his own Op. 10 and Op. 25 sets make far more extreme demands on any pianist. I’m not a keyboard player, and a few minutes’ exposure to the more flamboyant numbers can leave me feeling dizzy. Performing the whole collection in sequence is a tall order, and I’d suggest that listening to them is best done in small doses. Sonya Bach attacks the more extrovert études with a near-reckless abandon. She’s Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The Wigmore Hall’s triumphant series of lockdown lunchtime concerts by the finest of local recitalists is not without an audience; it’s just that the performers can’t see them. Conversely, online viewers can watch the artists closely enough to see what fingering pianists choose for the awkward passages, and the sound quality is remarkably fine - though may also depend on your computer or smartphone (I heard Steven Isserlis’s recital the other day on my phone from the middle of Richmond Park). It’s welcome, as it’s all we have at present, but I, for one, refuse to accept that bone-chilling Read more ...
Paul Lewis
As an instrumentalist, you can sit down and play music and escape from the stress. It’s a privilege to be able to do something that takes you to a different place – you’re removed from everything that’s happening. When you stop, there are reminders all around, though: worry about the health of friends and family, and concern about when we’re going to play concerts again and what it’s going to be like when we do.I like a bit of structure to my day so that I don’t swim around in lots of time. I practise in the morning until lunchtime. The kids are learning online, so in the afternoon I help Read more ...
Ian Page
My latest recording with The Mozartists is the first in a seven-volume series [reviewed by Graham Rickson in his Classical CDs Weekly column] exploring the so-called “Sturm und Drang” (literally translated, “storm and stress”) movement that swept through music and other art forms between the early 1760s and the early 1780s. In its strictest sense this was an exclusively literary movement which developed in Germany during the 1770s, and which owes its name to the title of a play written in 1776 by Maximilian Klinger. Its general objectives were to frighten and perturb through the use of a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, Rêverie et caprice, La mort d'Ophélie, Sara la baigneuse Utah Symphony/Thierry Fischer, with Philippe Quint (violin) (Hyperion)Just two big symphonies by French composers can be counted as standard repertoire. Having recorded the current box office favourite as part of their excellent cycle of Saint-Saëns symphonies, Thierry Fischer’s Utah forces now tackle the other one, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. A few of Fischer’s interpretative decisions prompted me to look at the score to see if he’d changed anything. I’m used to the horn and woodwind snarls at Read more ...
Richard Bratby
After a devastating drought, even a light shower can feel like something of a miracle. Under normal circumstances, a 60 minute lunchtime piano recital from the Wigmore Hall would represent wholly unremarkable business as usual for BBC Radio 3. As it was – coming (as the presenter Andrew McGregor reminded us) eleven weeks after the Wigmore had last heard live music – this felt like an event of profound significance. Perhaps that’s no bad thing. Perhaps we haven’t always listened to artists as life-affirming as Stephen Hough, and music as great as his opening programme of Bach and Schumann, as Read more ...
Gabriel Prokofiev
For most people a turntable, or record player is used to play back old vinyls bought from a market or second hand store, or perhaps a carefully packaged reissue of a classic album. We gently place the needle at the beginning of the record and are careful not to scratch the vinyl when we turn it over. But for a turntablist or DJ it is a musical instrument, and they handle it with much greater confidence and familiarity. When two turntables are set up with a mixer a wealth of new musical worlds can be created.This relatively new musical tradition of turntablism has a fascinating and rich Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Great idea to use a symphony orchestra as the basis for a TV drama, because all of human life is there. Not to mention death, since this entertaining, though melodramatic, new French import (Channel 4) began with the dramatic collapse on the podium of veteran conductor George Delvaux just as he was launching into the finale of the New World symphony. He was pronounced dead at the scene.After Delvaux’s demise, the plot orbits around the return to Paris of ace French conductor Hélène Barizet, played with flair and tremendous dress sense by Marie-Sophie Ferdane. Though strangely, she carries a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Korngold: Violin Concerto, String Sextet Andrew Haveron (violin), RTÉ Concert Orchestra/John Wilson, Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble (Chandos)Erich Korngold began writing his String Sextet in 1914, when he was just 17. Listeners immune to the pleasures of Korngold’s late Violin Concerto and Symphony in F Sharp might reconsider if they listened to the Sextet first. This is a big, four-movement work, technically brilliant and emotionally rich, largely devoid of the showy flamboyance that can thrill or irk in the orchestral works. Your attention is grabbed at the outset; it’s as if Read more ...
David Nice
In an atmosphere of uncertainty created by a government desperate to boost the economy despite the COVID-19 infection rate not reducing significantly, some UK venues and organisations are moving responsibly towards some kind of new normality. The Wigmore Hall has lunchtime concerts every weekday from 1 June, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and livestreamed on the hall's website. The BBC Proms has announced live concerts for the last two weeks of "the biggest music festival in the world", with plenty online before that. Meanwhile, it's time to focus again on some great instrumentalists.Igor Levit in Read more ...
Andsnes, Eriksmoen and friends, Bergen International Festival online review - from Mozart to Widmann
David Nice
This is as close as we’re going to come now to the real festival experience. The enviably well-funded Bergen International Festival is serving up on average three or four events a day, livestreamed from atmospheric venues around the city and all available for a month. For those of us lucky to have witnessed the more intimate strand within the international programme curated by great pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, teaming up this year with outstanding soprano Mari Eriksmoen and young players from the (also well-funded) Crescendo mentoring programme, it was close to teleportation. But whereas fiv Read more ...
Esther Yoo
COVID-19 hurls the artist into the unknown. June is the time of year where I, like many, look back on everything I have accomplished over the last two quarters and look forward to my plans and goals for the next six months. As my birthday happens to fall in mid June, it’s a particularly opportune moment for me to think about my personal timeline and envision how I want to commence a new year. For the first time ever, though, my reflection involuntarily focuses on everything I have not been able to accomplish this half-year and my spirits are not greatly lifted by the prospects for the Read more ...