Classical music
Sebastian Scotney
Six weeks ago, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation announced that it the winner of its prestigious and extremely valuable main annual prize for 2020 "to a composer, performer, or scholar who has made outstanding contributions to the world of music" will be the viola player Tabea Zimmermann. She commented to an interviewer that what mattered to her most was neither well-paid concert appearances nor playing in large halls, but rather to be involved in things that are interesting for what she called their "Inhalt". The German language is blessed with words that have a whole field of Read more ...
David Nice
Eyes watering, heart thumping, hands clenched: no, not The Thing, but a spontaneous reaction to the opening of Bach's St John Passion in the urgent hands of Masaaki Suzuki. How his Bach Collegium oboes seared with their semitonal clashes while bass lines throbbed with pain, before the chorus added a different, supernatural turn of the screw. Immediate indeed, but this Passion was never too fast, only continuous in its drama so that even the chorales, with every word illuminated as Bach so expressively set it, hit home like a Greek chorus reacting to the immediate situation rather than as the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
No orchestra wants its conductor to cancel in the week of a concert. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s illness was announced only on Monday, but even in ideal conditions, if you needed to find a last minute replacement maestro for a programme of Bartók and Bruckner, you could hardly do better than Omer Meir Wellber: a conductor with whom the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has built a relationship that predates his recent appointment to the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. And while it was unquestionably disappointing to be deprived of Gražinytė-Tyla’s first adventure into Bruckner (on these Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Perhaps the most surprising thing is how good natured they all sound. There’s no anger. At least, not much – one can’t help wondering what they say off air. Through a kaleidoscope of vocation, hopes, dreams, inspirations, and worries about stuff that their male counterparts do not have to consider, nine conductors who happen to be female share their stories in this engaging and long-overdue film, with humour, intelligence and an occasional dose of major frustration.Women are increasingly stepping to the fore in the world of orchestral conducting, but my goodness, it has taken a long time. In Read more ...
Robert Beale
Omer Meir Wellber, who once used to do magic with music for children, pulled a whole set of rabbits out of the hat in his reading of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony on Saturday. Others may make the work's rhythms and melodies alluring through the sheer forward momentum of a steady beat. Not Wellber. The most striking thing about the first two movements, as he directed them, was that the contrast of mystery and vigour embodied in the shapes and dynamics of the music’s rhythm, melody and harmony was also represented in its speed – or rather, speeds.It's a way of conducting Beethoven symphonies that Read more ...
Electra Perivolaris
My brief for this exciting and empowering project was to compose a new choral piece for the BBC Singers, to form one movement of a composite work, bringing together seven female composers spanning the generations of womanhood. The project offered the possibility of examining what it means to be a woman living at this time, as well as the chance of viewing the world through the eyes of seven unique women, each presenting an alternative vision of life in 2020 from a female perspective, largely absent from classical composition until very recently.The project was also personally significant, Read more ...
David Nice
"All true spiritual art has always been RADICAL art": thus spake the oracular Georges Lentz, composer of the pitch-black odyssey for electric guitar that took everyone by surprise last night. In that vein, why not add that all the greatest performers always push the boundaries, and that 28-year-old Sean Shibe, though included by the sponsors of this concert among "emerging talent", is already in their select company. This amazing Wigmore concert took us from a first half of fragrant miniatures by David Fennessy and minimal magic from Sofia Gubaidulina elided into radical Bach to the " Read more ...
graham.rickson
Christopher Gunning: Symphonies 2, 10 & 12 BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Kenneth Woods (Signum)You’ve probably heard Christopher Gunning’s music without realising it: he’s been a prolific film and television composer for decades. A pupil of both Edmund Rubbra and of Richard Rodney Bennett, he's best known for the insidiously catchy theme for ITV’s long-running Poirot series. Three of Gunning’s 12 symphonies are included here, written between 2003 and 2018. Whereas many contemporary film composers specialise in short, colourful bursts of descriptive music, Gunning knows how to Read more ...
David Nice
Fast is fine in Beethoven, so long as you find breathing-spaces, expressive lines and crisp articulation within it. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra's febrile new chief conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, started the "Pastoral" Symphony last night with a brisk but detailed walk which was interesting in itself, especially given the level of commitment from the players, but a breathless rapidity saw diminishing returns even in a symphony which ought to be able to take it, the Seventh. There's clearly an excitement about what's going on in the new partnership, but is it enough?It should have been a joy Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The tough, knotty writing of the Missa solemnis – its “unrelenting integrity”, Donald Runnicles said in a pre-concert interview – was addressed unflinchingly last night by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. They have a distinguished history with the piece, having given memorable Proms performances with Sir Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink – and remembered now by a hissy tape transfer, Pierre Boulez to open the 1972 season. However, the burden of history and reputation was shaken off last night. Not with the iconoclastic severity or stripped-back sonorities redolent of period-instrument Read more ...
David Nice
Three works two centuries apart, two of them rarities, with 100/200 years between each: that's no guarantee for programming success, and no way to fill a hall (though the London Philharmonic Orchestra admin deserves a good medal for the intricacy of its “2020 Vision” series planning, linked to the Beethoven anniversary and explained by Gavin Dixon in his review of Vladimir Jurowski’s launch concert earlier this month). Yet focused, febrile energy connected it all, from the solo-piano chords at the beginning of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto – a rare start to an orchestral concert, and from Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eisler: Leipzig Symphony, Night and Fog, Sorrowful Pieces from Film Scores MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Kammersymphonie Berlin/Jürgen Bruns (Capriccio)The Leipzig Gewandhausorchester commissioned a symphony from Hanns Eisler in 1959. Adept at recycling, his intention was to reuse and rearrange music from the film scores written during his last years in East Berlin. The symphony was never completed, until erstwhile pupil Tilo Medek obtained permission from Eisler’s widow in the late 1990s to investigate what the composer had left. Which wasn’t much, Medek having to work out which Read more ...