Classical music
graham.rickson
Mike Block: Step into the Void (Bright Shiny Things)The packaging and art design are deceptive; two-thirds of this release is actually a classy set of Bach’s Cello Suites (“... attempting to comprehend all of the Cello Suites as a single entity is truly like stepping into the void.”) . Cellist Mike Block has form in this repertoire. He’s the creator of the Block Strap, “the first product designed so that you can stand/move/dance while playing the cello,” using his invention to help make video recordings of individual Bach movements in the bathrooms of famous concert halls. Block Read more ...
Stephen Maddock
This year was supposed to be so very different. For the best part of the last decade we have been planning a series of major events to take place in 2020 to mark the centenary of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Having often commented on how remarkable it was that this institution should have been started by civic leaders in the wake of the First World War and the Spanish flu pandemic, the last thing I expected was that the worst pandemic since then would wipe out most of our centenary activities.In fact, it could have been even worse for us. The first of our five planned overseas Read more ...
graham.rickson
Carl Davis: Intolerance Luxembourg Radio Symphony Orchestra/Carl Davis (Carl Davis Collection)You’ve probably heard a Carl Davis film score without realising it, this versatile composer’s prolific career taking in Thames Television’s iconic series The World at War and scores of newly written soundtracks for silent films. Abel Gance’s five-hour epic Napoleon is one example, and recent work includes a superb score for Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. This is a reissue of Davis’s music for DW Griffith’s Intolerance, recorded in 1986 for a Channel 4 transmission. Intolerance’s four Read more ...
David Nice
One person playing one instrument from home to the edification and delight of thousands: it's been a constant in these confining days, and well meant even if the sound isn't always up to it, a necessary substitute for live communication on both sides. But this is something else: an education, a detailed sharing of love and consolation which makes me wonder why other musicians haven't taken up the challenge (maybe some have, but I haven't heard about it). The fact is that few can match Jeremy Denk's ease of playing as he talks, his infinite knowledge of the richest sets of piano music in the Read more ...
Rob Adediran
Our brains are hardwired to respond to crisis by fleeing or fighting. Crisis creates fear and fear demands action so we protect ourselves by running from danger or battling against it. You can see these instinctive responses in the language of the moment where the coronavirus is described as an invisible enemy that must be defeated, and in our actions as we move away from one another to maintain a crucial social distance to protect ourselves and others.In the arts, too, organisations are shoring up their defences to reduce risk and attempting to outrun disaster. These are understandable and Read more ...
David Nice
Bach, being The Greatest, can take any amount of adaptation. I'm especially addicted, for instance, to CDs on which the Japanese percussionist Kuniko plays cello suites and violin sonatas on the marimba. So it was going to be fascinating to hear a truncated St John Passion for Good Friday arranged, in this needs-must time, for percussion and harpsichord/organ, with a tenor taking all the lines bar the chorales, livestreamed by ensembles which would have participated in this year's Bachfest in Leipzig plus a vocal quintet in the same church, the Thomaskirche for which Bach wrote his great Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: St Matthew Passion The Choir of King’s College Cambridge, Academy of Ancient Music/Sir Stephen Cleobury (King’s College Cambridge)Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki (BIS)Both Masaaki Suzuki and the late lamented Sir Stephen Cleobury have recorded Bach's St Matthew Passion before. I struggled to choose between these two new versions, so thought it best to include both. Overall timings for both sets are, amazingly, just a few seconds apart, though BIS manage to squeeze Suzuki’s version onto just two discs. His account was taped under studio conditions in Japan last April, and Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
When I saw that the Berlin Philharmonic had thrown open the doors to its virtual concert hall the thing that most interested me was to see some Karajan. When I was a child in the mid-1980s I lived for a while in Berlin and my father took me to the Philharmonie several times. I remember seeing Karajan, then in the final years of his long Berlin reign. His conducting was minimal – helped onto the stage, seated on the podium and conducting with sometimes barely perceptible gestures – but there was an aura that was palpable.Although by the mid-1980s Karajan was physically diminished, in the Read more ...
David Nice
Necessity has certainly been the mother of invention over the past three weeks, and orchestras especially, left in the dark with no means of coming together other than virtually, have had to adapt double-quick. The players, of course, are artists, and in league with good technical teams they've yielded some winners which may bring more people to the real thing when life as we knew it resumes.From pianists livestreaming in terrible sound to a whole bunch of players taking on orchestral music with state-of-the-art engineering for a polished end result has been quite a leap. The first that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas Fazil Say (Warner Classics)“This is a 605 minute piece containing 32 sonatas.” There's some bewildering verbiage from pianist Fazil Say near the back of Warners’ booklet, Say describing the creation of his ‘Fazil Say Beethoven Orchestra“, and practicing the piano sonatas in front of an ‘imaginary Beethoven’, “brimming with boundless energy and musical spirit.” It's easier to understand the relief felt by Say when 11 months of recording sessions came to an end in May 2019: “…a strange weight lifted from me. I felt like I was in a huge void.” Predictably Read more ...
Steven Osborne
How fast the world can change. What seemed unimaginable just weeks ago, the effective shuttering of our societies, is now a reality in many countries for at least weeks and quite possibly several months to come. I hope for the health and security of all of you reading this. I’m not going to reflect on our situation at any length as I’m sure many of you have read far more on the subject than is good for you - I certainly have! - but rather I want to talk about an idea that came to me a few days ago that gave me a lot of pleasure.As I reflected on months at home without concerts and thought Read more ...
Czech Philharmonic Benefit Concert online review – profound musicianship in sombre masked fundraiser
David Nice
Less than six months ago Prague’s most prestigious concert hall, the neo-Renaissance Rudolfinum, was all glittering lights and packed, smartly dressed audience for the Czech Philharmonic’s hot ticket first performance there for 49 years of its national epic, Smetana’s Má vlast (My Homeland) – a grand one indeed under principal conductor Semyon Bychkov. No greater contrast could be imagined to this, its most recent event, in which an auditorium devoid of everyone but camera operators, presenter and two guests rippled with a filleted performance of the most famous movement – "Vltava", or "The Read more ...