Classical music
David Nice
Seven European cities, seven works: from an eight-year-old's First Symphony composed in what is now Ebury Street to the towering concert aria for Josepha Dushchek of Prague's Villa Bertramka, Ian Page's latest Mozart cornucopia took us on a rich and at times startling journey, a testament - as Page wrote eloquently yesterday in his article for The Arts Desk - to the abiding need for freedom of movement in a human being's development, regardless of artistic talent or age.If there was a flaw, it came in the inevitable grouping of pretty but hardly ground-breaking numbers in the first half - and Read more ...
'A product not only of his era but also of his travels': Ian Page on Mozart's cosmopolitan education
Ian Page
When Mozart was an established composer living in Vienna during the final years of his short life, a young student seemingly came to him to seek his advice. The would-be young composer said that he was planning to write a symphony, and asked Mozart what advice he could give to him. Mozart replied that a symphony was a complex undertaking, and suggested that the youngster should first write a few keyboard sonatas and string quartets before undertaking an orchestral work. The student, however, was indignant. “But, Herr Mozart,” he allegedly retorted, “you were writing symphonies when you were Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two hundred years ago next month, an assembly of around 60,000 people gathered on St Peter’s Fields in Manchester to protest about their lack of political representation. Speakers addressed the crowd, bands played and banners were carried.The local magistrates didn’t like it and gave orders for the crowd to be dispersed by the mounted yeomanry, backed up by the hussars, who drew their sabres and charged. Eighteen people were killed and hundreds injured. That was the "Peterloo Massacre", named after the Battle of Waterloo, only four years before. The centre of its site became that of the Free Read more ...
Robert Beale
As end-of-term concerts go, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is a biggie. In fact it’s hard to imagine any place of secondary education where they would even contemplate it.But for Chetham’s School of Music, the "Symphony of a Thousand" was a doable task, and for Stephen Threlfall’s last public appearance for Chetham’s as director of music it became a thrilling triumph. They’re only part of the way through celebrating 50 years of Chetham’s existence in 2019 – this was number 32 in a 50-concert series running through the year – but of those 50 it will probably be remembered the longest.Recorded for Read more ...
graham.rickson
The Orchestral Music of Jonathan Dove BBC Philharmonic/Timothy Redmond, with Lawrence Zazzo (counter-tenor) (Orchid Classics)Jonathan Dove’s Airport Scenes could be subtitled Four Air Interludes, each movement extracted from his Glyndebourne success, Flight. They're great fun, and conductor Timothy Redmond’s notes spell out what's happening second by second. Who wouldn't like to hear an orchestral version of a jet engine starting up and leave the tarmac? Dove paints his images with such skill, the hints of Wagner and John Adams never concealing his own personality. The other pieces on Read more ...
David Nice
Fortunate those Italian towns and cities whose Renaissance rulers looked to the arts to enrich their domain. Now neglect of cultural heritage can be laid at the doors of successive governments, but regional enlightenment can make a difference even in the era of Salvini. Treviso, clutching the inevitable title of "the Venice of the mainland" and only 30 kilometres distant from that still dreamlike city, was lucky to have a cultured centre-left mayor for five years between Lega Nord representatives, one of them convicted for trying to form an armed criminal gang during the late 1990s; sadly in Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The festival Summer Music in City Churches is in only its second year, filling a gap left by the demise of the long-running City of London Festival. This year’s festival had the theme of Words and Music and offered an enticing programme of recitals, talks and walks, focusing on English music through the ages, and finding enterprising ways of combining solo performers with resident ensembles the London Mozart Players and the City of London Choir. The closing concert showcased works inspired by Shakespeare plays, presenting them alongside Shakespeare’s words, spoken by actor Tama Matheson.The Read more ...
graham.rickson
David Matthews: Symphony No 9, Variations for Strings, Double Concerto for Violin and Viola Sarah Trickey (violin), Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola), English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Nimbus Alliance)Ninth symphonies are usually big beasts, but David Matthews’, completed in 2015, whizzes through five movements in 27 minutes. This is easy music to love, a modern expression of the English pastoral tradition which never descends into easy pastiche. Nods to Vaughan Williams, Britten and Tippett never impede the music’s flow; instead, we're beguiled at Matthews’ ability to write defiantly Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Emanuel Ax here celebrated his 70th birthday with an all-Schumann recital. In fact, it was an all-Schumann marathon, a three-hour concert at Wigmore Hall featuring solo works, Dichterliebe with Simon Keenlyside, and, with the Dover Quartet, the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet. Ax has an unassuming stage presence, and blends easily into chamber ensembles. Even so, he remained the centre of attention here, with the other performers softening their tone and applying an extra level of grace in order to match the supple flow of Ax’s Schumann.The Arabeske, op. 18, began the concert, and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mahler: Symphony No 10, completed and arranged for chamber orchestra by Michelle Casteletti Lapland Chamber Orchestra/John Storgårds (BIS)Other Mahler symphonies have been downsized on CD: there are superb transcriptions of Nos 7 and 9 from Peter Stangel’s Taschenphilharmonie and the Camerata RCO respectively. Michelle Casteletti’s version draws most heavily on Deryck Cooke’s idiomatic performing version (rightly so; the various other completions don't sound like Mahler), played here by just 24 musicians: single winds and a tiny string section, backed up with harp, percussion, piano and Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Treatise by Cornelius Cardew is the defining work of the graphic notation movement. The score, completed in 1967, is made up of 193 landscape pages, each with two empty musical staves running along the bottom, with an array of graphic designs above, often incorporating elements of musical notation, but rarely specifying pitches or rhythms.Throughout the summer term at Goldsmiths, a series of concerts have presented different interpretations of an 11-page excerpt from Treatise (pp. 115-126), and this, the conclusion of the Treatise Project, brought six readings together. The Project, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The Barbican Hall hardly boasts the numinous acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral for which Vaughan Williams composed his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but Sir Simon Rattle has long known how to build space into the architecture of what he conducts.No indulgences needed to be made for the students of the Guildhall School of Music next door. They slotted seamlessly within the ranks of the LSO to conjure a luminous halo of string sound, untroubled by the sense of loss which belongs to the piece in more lean and urgent performances. Their wind colleagues then filled the stage for Percy Read more ...