Classical music
graham.rickson
Grieg: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Delius: Piano Concerto Mark Bebbington, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Jan Latham-Koenig (Somm)I’m not a big Delius fan – those exquisitely perfumed miniatures don’t quite do it for me, and the tone poems leave me cold. Shouldn't a composer who led such an interesting life have written more striking music? Still, I defy anyone not to be moved by Ken Russell’s haunting BBC dramatisation of Delius’s last years, and pianist Mark Bebbington’s new account of his Piano Concerto has wowed me. In three linked sections and closing with a reprise of the opening Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, debate and spoken word, with visual artist David Shrigley as Guest Director.Enter this competition by entering your details here for a chance to win a fantastic break for two over the closing weekend of Brighton Festival (Fri 25 – Sun 27 May).The prize package includes:A two-night stay at Sooty’s Read more ...
Katie Colombus
This Brighton Festival opener is a perfect fit for day one, coming shortly after the Children's Parade and coasting on the gorgeous, beachy day outside the Brighthelm Centre. I have come from said beach, armed with my own Boy. He's 3. His opinion here is probably more vaild than mine, although he's a little short on the vocabulary.Children are invited to sit at the front of the stage on cushions and blankets, it's a warm and welcoming atmosphere to an inclusive show. Attention is caught by the cast members (Xavier Pathy-Barker, James Aiden Kay, Nick Tigg, Carol Walton and Edward Liddall) Read more ...
David Nice
When you have 21 women to present in song, but only a couple among the 14 poets and none to represent them out of the 15 composers idolising or giving them a voice, you need two strong defenders of their sex at the helm. Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook are no shrinking violets – the soprano no longer a light lyric, the pianist supportive only in the best sense, full of flexible power and forceful middle-to-lower-range sonorities for the voice to coast above.Certainly there were colour and variety enough from both to create worlds in miniature throughout a well-proportioned programme with quite a Read more ...
Christopher Glynn
The idea for a new translation of Schubert's Winterreise came from an old recording. Harry Plunket Greene was nearly 70 (and nearly voiceless) when he entered the studio in 1934 and sang "Der Leiermann," the final song of the cycle, in English (as "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man") into a closely-placed microphone. But the result is unforgettable - a haunting performance of the most mysterious soliloquy in all music, given by an old singer nearing the end of his own road. Like all great performances of Lieder, it relies less on vocal perfection and more on a leap of imagination, inhabiting the world of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No 3, Méhul: Symphony No 1 Solistes Européens Luxembourg/Christoph König (Rubicon)Étienne-Nicolas Méhul was one of revolutionary France’s key musicans. He was commissioned by Napoleon to write his Chant national du 14 juillet 1800, the work serving for a time as an unofficial national anthem. Best remembered as an operatic composer, he also left behind five symphonies. This Symphony in G minor, dating from 1808, is a fascinating discovery. Dripping with angst, it recalls Haydn's stormier symphonies and has a finale with a motif sounding uncannily like Beethoven’s Read more ...
David Nice
Insistence was the name of the LA Phil's first game in its short but ambitious three-day Barbican residency - insistence honed to a perfect sheen and focus, but wearing, for this listener at least, some way in to the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony played in the second half. The essence was a layered, ultimately blistering performance of Varèse's ever startling Amériques sculpted with the energetic rhythmic precision at which Gustavo Dudamel excels, and rich with sensuous perspectives not easy to achieve in this flattening, amplifying hall. That would have been enough to send us home bouncing and Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
When a “historically informed” performance leaves a lasting imprint on the memory, it does so like a good historical novel, by bringing to bear not only a wealth of period detail but the unarguable flavour of a time that is not our own. This was a particular strength of the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s recital at Kings Place on Sunday.It began with three excerpts from The Art of Fugue, often prized as some of the most “abstract” music ever written, whatever that might mean. The measured tread of the Chiaroscuro’s account, however, built in the mind’s ear and eye a mahogany chamber and an Read more ...
David Nice
Reaching for philosophical terms seems appropriate enough for two deep thinkers among Russian pianists (strictly speaking, Kolesnikov is Siberian-born, London-based). In what Kant defined as the phenomenal world, the tangible circumstances, there were equal if not always predictable measures of innocence and experience in these Wigmore recitals two days apart. Lugansky's began, and Kolesnikov's officially ended, with Schumann reimagined; Debussy was at the core of both (or one of several cores). In the noumenal sphere, both pianists reach for the "thing in itself", Ding an sich, chose en soi Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I’m not sure what exactly this event was – orchestral concert, electronic dance music gig or multimedia extravaganza – but however you define it, I loved every mad minute. Anna Meredith (b 1978) is one of the most successful contemporary classical composers of her generation but revels in crossing genre divides, and this event delighted in smashing boundaries with breathtaking confidence.Meredith, whose starry classical CV includes pieces in the 2008 Last Night of the Proms and the recently announced First Night of the 2018 Proms, has a taste for the unusual or technically challenging, not Read more ...
David Nice
In a classical recording industry seemingly obsessed with marketing beautiful young female violinists, but very often presenting them in repertoire to which most of them seem to have little individual to add, how do you make your mark? Norwegian Eldbjørg Hemsing came up with a bright idea typical of a thoughtful approach in which the music always comes first: to twin a 1914 concerto she genuinely admires by a compatriot very few people will know, Hjalmar Borgstrøm (1864-1925), with what is perhaps the ultimate 20th century challenge to violinists, Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto.Is the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Borgström: Violin Concerto, Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 Eldbjørg Hemsing (violin), Wiener Symphoniker/Olari Elts (BIS)Hjalmar Borgström sounds like the name of a BBC Four gumshoe, a melancholy detective solving crimes in downtown Tromsø. He was actually a Norwegian composer (1864-1925) who, like Grieg, studied in Germany, remaining there for 15 years. Grieg quickly assimilated his technique with native folk music, later expressing dismay at the younger Borgström’s lack of interest in making his music sound specifically Norwegian. His G major Violin Concerto was premiered in 1914 Read more ...