Classical music
theartsdesk
It’s the best-looking Proms season on paper for quite a few years. That might just be a different way of saying we like it, but no-one could reproach Director David Pickard for lack of original programming or diversity (look at the whole, bigger than ever, and who but a click-baiting controversialist or the more conservative diehards could resent the appearance of Sir Tom Jones, still top of his art?) Enjoy the many European visitors, including the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Orchestra of La Scala Milan and the Vienna Philharmonic, while you can; it may not be so easy to bring Read more ...
graham.rickson
Péter Eötvös: Paradise Reloaded (Lilith) Soloists, Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Gregory Vajda (BMC)Experiencing new operas on disc without seeing them performed means that any judgements have to be based on the music alone. Péter Eötvös’s Paradise Reloaded (Lilith) worked for me, largely because the score is consistently entertaining. This is a reworking of an earlier Eötvös opera, The Tragedy of the Devil. Playwright and librettist Albert Ostermaier shifted the focus away from Lucifer to Lilith, Adam’s first wife; the opera examines what might have happened if she, instead of Eve, were Read more ...
Roderick Williams
“So, what do you do for a living?” You might think this question, the mainstay of any polite conversation with a new acquaintance, would be just the moment any opera singer would relish. Here is the chance to declare who we are, what we do, and to bask in some adulation. “An opera singer? No, really? That must be so glamorous…” and so on.That may not necessarily be the case, however, at least not for all of us. I was talking to a soprano colleague the other night and she admitted that she tries to keep her profession out of such a conversation as long as possible. It might be her only chance Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
William Christie chose a suitably light and breezy programme for this warm summer evening’s concert at St. John’s Smith Square. The concert was titled “Bach goes to Paris”, with works chosen to highlight the connections between the German master and his French contemporaries. But, more significantly, they showcased Christie’s deep affinity with French Baroque music, and the vibrancy and passion he brings to this repertoire.For Christie, Baroque music is always about dance, so it was fitting that much of this music derived from ballet. Christie gestures broadly from the podium, but rarely to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Piano Concertos Sunwook Kim (piano), Hallé/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)Compare the openings of Brahms’s two piano concertos and you'd be mistaken for thinking they were by different composers. The earlier work begins with the fiercest of orchestral growls, the piano waiting a full five minutes before entering. No. 2 starts with a soft, serene horn call, immediately answered by solo piano. It's tempting to see them as portrayals of youthful impetuosity and serene maturity respectively, though they’ve much in common, besides extravagant length. I'll confess to preferring No. 1’s darker Read more ...
graham.rickson
Falla: Nights in the Garden of Spain, Ravel: Piano Concertos Steven Osborne (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ludovic Morlot (Hyperion)Steven Osborne's solo Ravel anthology is among the best available, and it's good that he's now tackling the composer's two very different piano concertos. Not all pianists succeed in both. Osborne does, understanding each one's distinct character. His Concerto in G major is sharp-witted and joyous in the outer movements, the pounding Gershwinesque writing urging the music forward. Any hint of brittleness is offset by Osborne’s delight in Ravel’s Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall. They are known as new music specialists – the group was founded by Pierre Boulez as the house band for the IRCAM electronic music studio – so Ravel and Debussy are early music for them. In fact, those venerable names were included to give context to more recent French and Italian compositions. Leading mid-century modernists were also included – Messiaen, Maderna and Berio – but the real substance was provided by two living composers, Philippe Schoeller and Matteo Franceschini, both offering Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antheil: Symphonies 4 and 5, Over the Plains BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)American composer George Antheil boastfully described himself as the early 20th century’s "bad boy of music", though a few hours sent in the company of this disc might lead you to wonder quite what all the fuss was about. Perhaps Antheil just had the knack of being in the right place at the right time: his Ballet mécanique, featuring multiple keyboards and an aeroplane propellor, caused a short-lived scandal in Paris in 1926. Antheil returned to the US in the early 1930s, settling in Hollywood in 1936 Read more ...
David Nice
Tears were likely to flow freely on this most beautiful and terrible of June evenings, especially given a programme – dedicated by Vladimir Ashkenazy to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire – already prone to the elegiac. It could hardly be otherwise with the music of Elgar and Sibelius, two Europeans with a penchant for introspection whose works Ashkenazy knows well. What ended up nearly breaking us, though, was an encore – none I've heard has ever been more astonishing – by that ever unpredictable violinist Pekka Kuusisto.He told us he'd planned to play a "jolly Read more ...
David Nice
The time is out of joint for Turkey at the moment, but it’s still a country equally split between those looking to the west for the culture of ideas and the more conservative element which at least needs its voice respected. They co-exist peacefully in a great cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, which recently joined Ankara and Izmir in rejecting increased powers for its leader. Facing difficult challenges and late cancellations, the vivacious Yeşim Gurer, director of the 45th Istanbul Music Festival, held a fine balance between the urban intelligentsia's hunger for fine western ensembles and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach, Bartók, Boulez Michael Barenboim (violin) (Accentus)Michael Barenboim’s disc consists solely of pieces by composers whose names begin with B, but it’s effectively an A-Z of solo violin technique, as well as a demonstration of his winning versatility. Bach’s C major Sonata’s narrative is plotted with unerring skill, the hypnotic slow opening slowly growing in intensity before Barenboim lets off steam with an immaculate fugue. Similarly, the Largo prepares us for a bubbly, unbuttoned finale, Barenboim’s dynamic control masterly. It's not a huge jump from here to Bartók’s epic Sonata for Read more ...
theartsdesk
The first of Jiří Bělohlávek’s final three appearances in London, conducting his Czech Philharmonic in a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa, came as a shock. The trademark grey curly hair had vanished. Clearly he had undergone chemotherapy, but we all presumed – since no-one pries in these instances – that what had to be cancer was in remission. By the time of his Dvořák Requiem at the Barbican in April, the assumption was that he would carry on for an indefinite period of time. So his death at the untimely age of 71 last Wednesday came as a surprise even to those who knew him better Read more ...