Classical music
Richard Bratby
Apparently it was Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s idea to invite Jörg Widmann to be the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Artist in Residence this season – indeed, according to backstage rumours she made the phone call herself. If that’s true, it’s a hugely encouraging bit of intelligence. Widmann’s the perfect choice of artist to surf the energy that Gražinytė-Tyla is currently generating in Birmingham. He’s a charismatic soloist, and a composer of music with real potential audience appeal: flamboyant, vivid, grounded in (but never inhibited by) tradition, and madly in love with the sound Read more ...
David Nice
What pianist wouldn't long to lay fingers on keyboards impregnated, as Roman Rabinovich put it in his introduction yesterday afternoon, with the DNAs of Haydn and Chopin? To take three of the 31 instruments in the astonishing Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey - scattered throughout rooms with an equally breathtaking collection of pictures, including a late Titian masterpiece - have them placed them side by side in the neo-Wrenesque concert room added in 1903 to the rest of the 18th century building with its fine early Robert Adam ceilings, and make a totally satisfying programme in Read more ...
David Nice
They say that Wigmore Hall audiences know their Lieder singers, but last night's far from packed house dispelled that illusion; the hall has been full for much lesser artists than German soprano Anne Schwanewilms. No matter; she gave her usual masterclass, ineffably poised between tone-colour, phrasing and word-pointing. Having hit the heights in Strauss, Schumann and Wolf in previous recitals, she found a deep centre this time in serious, almost operatic Schubert. Regular song-partner Charles Spencer's space and orchestral sonorities helped conjure vast landscapes and epic human emotions in Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Richard Goode is one of the world’s great pianists, but you wouldn’t guess it from his humble and unpretentious stage manner. He wears thick glasses and squints into the music, and when he plays he sings along under his breath. When he is not playing, he often turns and gestures vaguely at the orchestra, not so much aping the conductor as moving with the flow of the music. He clearly lives every note, and everything he does is to the service of the score.Not virtuoso showmanship, then, and little bravado, though his playing is always lucid and engaging. That’s an ideal combination for Mozart’ Read more ...
David Nice
Sweden's ackowledged "National Orchestra", the Gothenburg Symphony, left its Chief Conductor post unfilled for four seasons, but now it's finally certain to have let the right one in. Having enjoyed a golden age in the (largely unsung) highest echelons of the European league for 22 years with grand master Neeme Järvi, the GSO enjoyed a burst of sensational if relatively short-lived music-making when its management snapped up Gustavo Dudamel in 2007. He stayed for five years; after that, there was no-one to fill the breach - until now. 31-year-old Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali took up his post Read more ...
graham.rickson
Sibelius: Piano Music Leif Ove Andsnes (Sony)Yes, Sibelius did write piano music, though not a lot of it gets heard. A recent BIS collection featured original pieces and transcriptions played on the composer's own piano, and Glenn Gould recorded a small selection in the 1970s. So Leif Ove Andsnes’s glorious disc fills a useful gap, but it's not just for completists. Sibelius himself famously complained that the piano “doesn't sing”, and Andrew Mellor's perceptive booklet essay describes the piano output as a chronically neglected secret. Andsnes's collection spans Sibelius’s career, opening Read more ...
David Nice
London orchestras do communicate with each other, sometimes at least, when it comes to programming. It can’t have been a coincidence that on Wednesday we had one Finnish chief conductor, Sakari Oramo launching his BBC Symphony Orchestra Sibelius cycle with a searing Fifth Symphony, followed last night by another, Esa-Pekka Salonen at the head of the Philharmonia, with the Sixth and Seventh, each prefaced by new(ish) Icelandic music in a programme which looked on paper even more enticing. Trouble is that while Oramo’s Sibelius really was that rare wonder where passion and precision become one Read more ...
David Nice
It was on the strength of a single concert including a startling Sibelius Luonnotar and Third Symphony, thankfully reported here, that Sakari Oramo was appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. We had to wait a while for more major Sibelius from them, revelling in the meanwhile in the team’s superlative Nielsen cycle. But their Kullervo at the Proms was unsurpassable – even if I’ve just heard one as good, in a different way, from the young conductor who had his first break thanks to Oramo, Santtu-Matias Rouvali – and now, at last, come all seven numbered symphonies this side of Read more ...
David Kettle
Increasingly, the Lammermuir Festival is – one audience member whispered conspiratorially to me – what East Lothian music lovers are switching to alongside the Edinburgh International Festival. It’s insidious to compare, of course – but still, you can see the attraction.In this part of the world, during August and September listeners are spoilt for choice. And with performers of the calibre of the Quatuor Mosaïques, Steven Osborne, Tenebrae, Alban Gerhardt, John Butt and more – all of whom appeared at this year’s event – Lammermuir is undeniably snapping at the heels of its far vaster, elder Read more ...
Robert Beale
Juanjo Mena memorably began his tenure as chief conductor at the BBC Philharmonic with a Mahler symphony (the Second), and chose to enter his seventh and last season with them at the Bridgewater Hall with the Third. It was a testimonial to an era at the end of which he leaves with the orchestra in at least as good shape as he found them, and in some ways better still. His time has included wide-ranging repertoire, and apart from a Fifth at the Proms, I believe this was the only other Mahler symphony performance he’s directed since that September day in 2011. But it’s been worth waiting for, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have nothing to prove when it comes to Renaissance choral music – few ensembles can match them for clarity, balance and purity of tone. They are perfect guides, then, for this tour of the late Italian Renaissance, an era, as they demonstrate, of surprising musical variety and fast-changing tastes.The choir is small, just 10 singers, and Cadogan Hall has a dry acoustic, at least compared to the vast basilicas of Northern Italy, so these were intimate readings. The broadly chronological survey began with Palestrina, whose opulent Laudate pueri lacked Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antheil: A Jazz Symphony, Piano Concerto No. 1, Capital of the Word, Archipelago “Rhumba” Frank Dupree (piano), Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Karl-Heinz Steffens (Capriccio)George Antheil’s worst move was probably calling his 1945 autobiography Bad Boy of Music. If he'd genuinely been that naughty, he'd have become a household name instead of fading into obscurity. A recent Chandos disc of Antheil symphonies underwhelmed me, but this raucous anthology makes a much more persuasive case for Antheil's talents. Try the invigorating Jazz Symphony from 1925. Performed here in its Read more ...