Classical music
David Nice
Pianists most often cite Radu Lupu alongside Martha Argerich and Grigory Sokolov as the greatest. So it was hardly surprising to see so many top musicians in a packed audience, buzzing with expectation for the 73-year-old Romanian's most recent UK appearance with a conductor he respects, Paavo Järvi. Lupu appeared at Steven Isserlis's 60th birthday event at the Wigmore towards the end of last year, but before that hasn't been seen here since 2014. I heard him then, but in Stockholm, giving a magisterial performance of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. Last night's Fourth was exquisite at Read more ...
David Nice
Practitioners of musical authenticity and scholarly research, so guarded and protective of their territory in the early days, now like to spread the love around. So if an amateur choir of 100-plus like the BBC Symphony Chorus, celebrating its 90th anniversary, and selected members of a symphony orchestra want to tackle Bach's B minor Mass – as anyone in their right minds would wish to, since it's a monumental masterpiece – then they could hardly do better than entice the dynamic John Butt away from the small forces of his Dunedin Consort for a one-off spectacular.Or could they? As Butt beat Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In the fourth performance of their UK tour, with Vassily Sinaisky replacing an indisposed Yuri Temirkanov, the St Petersburg Philharmonic gave a warm and rousing performance at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Prokofiev’s First Symphony – written in "classical" style as a homage to Haydn – saw the orchestra start off with a deep and meaty tone, which gave a welcome depth to some of Prokofiev’s music, though it proved a bit bulky for many of the symphony’s light touches.The orchestra’s interpretation of the work was certainly more rooted in the romantic era than the classical. Sinaisky’s conducting Read more ...
graham.rickson
Adventures In Sound (él records)Dipping in and out of this highly desirable box set recalls 1950s sci-fi visions of the future, looking forward to a time when we'd all be driving flying cars and living under a benevolent one-world government. Alas, this is 2019 and things aren't quite so rosy. There's some seriously strange music here, undoubtedly forward-looking but very much of its time. Begin with Pierre Shaeffer, a French radio engineer who began playing with turntables to manipulate and distort sounds as early as 1948. His Cinq études de bruit was a groundbreaking example of Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Well, I didn’t expect that – and judging from the way the rest of the audience reacted, nor did anyone else. After Cristian Măcelaru slammed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra full speed into the final chord of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, there was a stunned silence, broken by gasps. And then cheers, as a smiling, visibly drained Măcelaru gestured back at the orchestra with both thumbs up. True, this is a symphony with a fearsome reputation: a rarity even today, when the idea that Vaughan Williams is anything other than a major 20th century modernist looks as parochial as his Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
There is no doubting Diana Damrau’s star power. She is not a demonstrative performer, and her voice is small, but the sheer character of her tone, and the passion she invests, make every line special. She is not one to over-sentimentalise either, so there was never any danger of Strauss’s Four Last Songs turning saccharine here. Conductor Mariss Jansons was on her wavelength, and brought richly coloured but always carefully controlled support from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.All of the Strauss on this programme – the Four Last Songs and Ein Heldenleben – was given in broad and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Couperin: Les Nations Réunies & autres sonades La Simphonie du Marais/Hugo Reyne (Musiques à la Chabotterie)François Couperin was one of the baroque era’s greatest keyboard composers. Did he write any orchestral music? Er, no. Though listen to a few minutes of Hugo Reyne’s version of his trio sonata “La Pucelle” and you'll be wondering where this music has been all your life. La Simphonie du Marais’s director and flautist, Reyne gives us a discursive but entertaining booklet essay in the form of an imaginary interview with Couperin. Near the end he tells the composer that “we made a Read more ...
Robert Beale
No one worried about melting icecaps and homeless penguins when Vaughan Williams wrote his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic around 70 years ago. (They do now, as a new music theatre piece by Laura Bowler to be premiered by Manchester Camerata next week will show). It was the challenge of the frozen continent and a heroic effort to reach its heart that counted.The film, starring John Mills, tells the story of Captain Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912, which ended in the deaths of all his team. Vaughan Williams provided music depicting tragedy amid the icy wastes with Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Endellion Quartet first rehearsed on 20 January 1979, deep in the throes of Britain’s so-called “Winter of Discontent”. That longevity – with three of the original players still on the team after four decades – makes the acclaimed ensemble roughly as old as Spandau Ballet, and senior to REM. While fashions in pop, and indeed politics, may change with the seasons, the quartet has matured and developed without losing touch with the qualities of sensitivity and solidarity that still make for so many exemplary performances.At 40, they now match the greatest age attained by the Amadeus Quartet Read more ...
Robert Beale
In contrast to a classic film soundtrack played live with the film, the idea in "symphonic cinema" is that the music, and its interpretation, come first. So the conductor is literally setting the pace, and to some extent the atmosphere, while the film is controlled in real time by an "image soloist", and the visuals follow the music’s lead rather than the other way round.It’s the brainchild of Lucas van Woerkum, who is that soloist, appearing on stage next to the rostrum like a concerto virtuoso, with a touchscreen as his instrument, and taking his bows alongside the maestro – in this case Read more ...
David Nice
Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Anna Þorvaldsdóttir: three names on quite a list I reeled off earlier this week when someone asked me why the compositions of Rebecca Saunders, in the news for winning the €250,000 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, make me lose the will to live, and whom I’d choose instead. Saunders gets a look-in at the very end of this Kings Place year of music by women, Venus Unwrapped, so I'll just have to try again. Meanwhile the first three, communicators all - as Saunders is not, for me - kicked off Bang on a Can's affably presented gallimaufry celebrating 27 years of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mia Brentano’s Hidden Sea – 20 Songs for 2 Pianos Benyamin Nuss & Max Nyberg (pianos) (Mons Records)Hiddensee is a car-free German island in the Baltic Sea. It's mentioned as one possible inspiration for the pieces on this beguiling disc; this music exists in its own prelapsarian world. There are allusions to Gershwin and, allegedly, Barbra Streisand, though the popular influences are treated in sophisticated ways. These pieces also sound incredibly difficult to play, Brentano suggesting that these songs without words need classically trained pianists to do them justice. “Early Read more ...