Classical music
David Nice
Three “little greats,” as Opera North might put it, proved just the thing to cleanse the palate in a quiet place the afternoon after the LSO/Rattle Stravinsky trilogy. Composed following a breakdown in 1914, the year after the premiere of The Rite of Spring and only two years before his untimely death at the age of 43, Max Reger’s Cello Suites are not so much early neo-Baroque – Bach is the unescapable role model, unequivocally homaged in the first – as neo-everything, and even proto-Prokofiev in the second movement of No. 2. To hear them played with impassioned resonance in a religious space Read more ...
David Nice
“Next he’ll be walking on water,” allegedly quipped a distinguished figure at the official opening of Simon Rattle’s new era at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra. Well, last night, with no celebratory overload around the main event, the homecomer was flying like a firebird, and taking a newly galvanised orchestra with him, at the start of another genuine spectacular. And that's no exaggeration, for how often, if ever, have you encountered all three of Stravinsky’s biggest, and earliest, ballets in a single concert?This journey from the compendium-salute to the Russian romantic Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
For his monster concerts in 1840s Paris, Berlioz took pride in assembling and marshalling a "great beast of an orchestra". At the Barbican on Sunday night, the LSO filled the stage and fitted the bill. Their thoroughbred tradition of Berlioz performance, long nurtured by the late Sir Colin Davis, looks set fair to be renewed by Sir Simon Rattle. Just as they had done last week in a remarkable survey of modern English music to open his tenure as music director, they gave him everything in La Damnation de Faust.Cramped acoustic be damned: there was playing here of unabashed violence, backed up Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Keep here your watch, and never part.” There was a strong symbolism of standing and singing together in the last moments of the Grenfell Tower Benefit Concert. After singing the Lament of Purcell's Dido, Christine Rice made her way back slowly through the orchestra to join the choir. All 150 participants in the concert, operatic stars, young singers, conductor, a special orchestra assembled from various London orchestras joined in for the final chorus of Dido and Aeneas. All had given their services for free to support charities helping Grenfell Tower survivors. The organisers ensured Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Cage: Two4 Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Naomi Sato (shō) (SN Variations)The shō is a Japanese wind instrument long associated with traditional court music. Looking like a bundle of sticks, its 17 pipes each plays a distinct pitch. Its sound is something else, the shō’s clusters of notes emerging and fading into silence along with the player’s breath. John Cage’s 1991 piece Two4 can be played by solo violin with piano or shō, their short-lived chords set against the violin’s ability to sustain individual notes for over a minute. Shō and violin blend well together in terms of sound; Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
After all the talk and anticipation, at last some music. Simon Rattle took up the reins of the London Symphony Orchestra last night – as its first ever “Music Director” – with a programme dedicated to home-grown composers whose lives span the lifetime of the orchestra. It set out Rattle’s ambition for his leadership of the LSO, who duly responded with performances of intelligence, passion and power.Of the five composers featured, four are still alive and, as Rattle had maintained in an interview, “Elgar is so lively he’s basically a living composer”. Most have a connection to the LSO or to Read more ...
theartsdesk
What do conductors actually do? It's a question that concert-goers, as well as listeners and viewers of the BBC Proms, often ponder. Conductors may not make a sound, but what they certainly do is put on a performance, the minutiae of which are captured by photographer Chris Christodoulou. For the eighth year running, we celebrate the end of the Proms season with an exclusive gallery of his snaps. They capture conductors in their agonies and their ecstasies, at their most intimate and expansive, hair flying, arms flailing, eyes imploring. Click on the thumbnails below to enjoy a feast of Read more ...
Robert Beale
Every 21st birthday deserves a party, and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester celebrated the anniversary of its opening with a weekend of fun and "access" events, ending with a recital by four pianists on its four Steinway pianos – playing them all at once, in eight-hand arrangements.It was very different from the opening 21 years ago, when orchestras dominated the programmes. This time even Manchester Camerata, the chamber orchestra with which the hall co-promotes events, moved round the corner to play in the gallery at HOME, a newer arts centre. But one of the early discoveries about this Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Last Night of the Proms is always a beautifully choreographed event, and this year’s was no exception. The format changes little, but each year a new selection of works is chosen to fill the slots. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, always the backbone of the season, somehow manages to sound fresh for their final outing. And the audience was dependable as ever, listening attentively through the first half, but then taking control of the second, and by the end making events onstage more or less irrelevant.By recent tradition, the Last Night opens with a premiere. The commission presumably calls Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Vienna Philharmonic makes a beautiful sound, no question about that: the question is what to do with it. Michael Tilson Thomas has some ideas, but they are mostly low-key. He is currently touring with the orchestra, and seems to have been chosen as a safe pair of hands, offering elegant and lyrical interpretations, but without any extravagance. The result was a concert that was all about the orchestra, and although the players had a few rough patches, it fully justified their world-class standing.Even so, it was often hard to shake the feeling that Tilson Thomas was playing it safe. His Read more ...
graham.rickson
Henze: Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge, Kammermusik 1958 Scharoun Ensemble Berlin/Daniel Harding, with Andrew Staples (tenor), Markus Weidmann (bassoon) and Jürgen Ruck (guitar) (Tudor)Hans Werner Henze worked regularly with the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin from 1983 onwards, and this enchanting collection includes works performed at a memorial concert given after Henze’s death in 2012. One of the best routes into Henze’s music must be through Oliver Knussen’s mesmerising DG set of Undine, surely one of the great 20th century ballet scores. Or via the two works collected here, which will floor Read more ...
David Nice
Outlines of a real face had begun to emerge in Daniel Harding’s conducting personality. His youthful rise to the top initially yielded neutral concerts with the LSO and a glassy, overpraised recording of Mahler’s Tenth in the Deryck Cooke completion with the Vienna Philharmonic. But then I heard a supple, intensely lyrical Brahms Third in the Concertgebouw and what came across on CD as a fine live interpretation of Mahler Six from Munich. With last night's Prom we were back to the enigma, best summed up in Otto Klemperer’s channeling of Brecht and Weill’s Jimmy Mahoney and his refrain “aber Read more ...