Classical music
Christopher Lambton
Mahler said of the last movement of his Fourth Symphony that it should be pure, like the “undifferentiated blue of the sky”. Writing the symphony in his lakeside retreat at Maiernigg in the summer of 1900, he probably had a different sort of blue in mind to that which streaked the Edinburgh sky on an icy Sunday afternoon in November. For Donald Runnicles, returning to conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, there was clearly something of the onset of winter in what is normally the sunniest of Mahler symphonies.It began soft and slow, the sleigh bells a stately procession leading through Read more ...
Helen Wallace
I could have sworn there was a spontaneous outbreak of phased coughing in the Barbican Hall on Saturday night, rapidly dissolving into laughter; such was the festive atmosphere at Steve Reich’s 80th birthday gig. This three-part epic attracted a full house, spanning the generations – from Michael Nyman, behind me mischievously proclaiming Reich’s debt to him, to students catching a glimpse of a legend.The man himself, on duty at the sound-desk, cast a colder eye on proceedings, at one point shouting angrily to stop a mis-synched start. We shouldn’t, of course, expect anything less: without Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Borodin Quartet has been playing for over 70 years, and in the early days collaborated closely with Dmitri Shostakovich. None of the players from then are in the line-up now, of course, but the group has worked hard to maintain its distinctive identity and performance traditions, even as the players change. And they have a good claim to continuity: Valentin Berlinsky, the legendary cellist who was with the quartet almost from the start, was still playing with them up until 2007.Shostakovich and Beethoven are the Quartet’s specialities, and this concert was part of a cycle of the two Read more ...
graham.rickson
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No.1, Glazunov: Violin Concerto Nicola Benedetti (violin), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits (Decca)So many decent recordings of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1 have appeared in recent years, and here’s another. James Ehnes was given superb support from Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and the same team accompany Nicola Benedetti on this disc. Lower strings are superb in the Nocturne’s shadier corners, Benedetti’s tone suitably parched. The scherzo’s rhythms are brilliantly sprung, but it’s the haunting, deeply-felt " Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
And so it comes to an end. Six months, 33 concerts, and many miles of travelling later, The Sixteen’s annual Choral Pilgrimage is now finished for another year. With so many concerts it’s inevitable that the singers’ relationship to the repertoire evolves and develops; the performances we heard last night will not have been those the audience at St John’s College, Cambridge experienced back in April. So what is the effect of living so intimately with this small handful of works?The 2016 Pilgrimage pairs music by William Byrd with that of Arvo Pärt – two composers separated by over four Read more ...
David Nice
It felt oddly disrespectful showing up in time for Schumann's wake on the fifteenth and final day of this year's Oxford Lieder Festival. Having started with the early piano music and many of the chamber works before moving on to Schumann's annus mirabilis of song, 1840, with frequent leaps backwards to influences and forwards to the influenced, pianist Sholto Kynoch’s labour of love reached the troubled final years dogged by whatever that insanity for which Schumann was institutionalised might have been – bipolarity, syphilis, poisoning for the mercury used in its treatment. Fortunately the Read more ...
Odaline de la Martinez
This year is the sixth London Festival of American Music, and I could not be more excited about it. From the first festival in 2006 – 10 years ago now – I had a very specific idea about what I wanted the London Festival of American Music to be like. At its heart the festival is designed to celebrate the contemporary American musical landscape, and to bring the best America has to offer to UK audiences.The American music scene has never been stronger – there is an amazing range of styles and works being produced all across the states. UK audiences, however, tend to be solely familiar with Read more ...
David Nice
What a relief to find Semyon Bychkov back on romantic terra firma after his slow-motion Mozart at the Royal Opera (performances speeded up somewhat, I'm told, after a sticky first night). On his own, dark-earth terms, there's no-one to touch him for nuanced phrasing, strength of purpose and the devoted responsiveness he wins from the BBC Symphony Orchestra - foot-stamping its approval at the end, a rarity - in Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. This week's two concerts in his "Beloved Friend" Tchaikovsky series both hit the heights and plumbed the depths, if not always entirely where expected.The Read more ...
graham.rickson
Josquin: Masses The Tallis Scholars/Peter Philips (Gimmell)Listeners hoping that Josquin might have deployed aleatoric, Cageian techniques in his Missa Di Dadi might feel short-changed here, though the musical virtues of this disc are never in question. The emoji-like dice graphics which Josquin placed at the head of the tenor part in several movements mostly function like musical performance directions, their score combinations giving the singers information about note and phrase lengths. Peter Phillips’s scholarly, entertaining sleeve essay makes a valiant attempt to explain the process, Read more ...
David Nice
Osmo Vänskä isn't by any means the only Finn who conducts magnificent Sibelius. Sakari Oramo is the BBC Symphony Orchestra's property, but the London Philharmonic could have gone for a change and invited Vänskä's equally impressive and even more experienced successor at the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Okko Kamu. Still, they played safe by repeating their success with this combination in 2010, adding British string concertos, and why not? "Vänskä's Sibelius" is a brand that guarantees full houses like last night's, and nobody conducts the Fourth Symphony like he does.That was the high point of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has a wonderful, characterful voice, with apparently effortless and even tone production and control. She seems to be able to spin out a quiet phrase – and just hold it for ever.The past few years have seen here winning prizes: she carried off both the main prize and the song prize at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and received the 2015 Richard Tucker award. Her opera career is now taking flight in major houses, and justifiably so. One audience member even incongruously yelled out “Sing Eboli!” at the start of the encores. She Read more ...
graham.rickson
Leonardo Leo: Sacred Works Ensemble &cetera/Ulrike Hofbauer (soprano and direction) (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)Leonardo Leo lived and worked in Naples in the early 18th century, effectively running the city’s musical life alongside Francesco Durante after the death of Alessandro Scarlatti in 1725. He didn’t enjoy a long and successful career, dying relatively young after a botched skin operation. His music, at least on the basis of this anthology, deserves to be much better known. Much of why it sounds so attractive here is down to the quality of these performances. Soprano Ulrike Hofbauer Read more ...