Classical music
David Nice
Gone, it seems, is the era of epic three-part Proms. Sunday afternoon's programme, partly billed as a children's hour, might have pleased pianist and pundit Stephen Hough, whose recent broadsheet plea for shorter concerts somewhat overdid the need (lunchtime events already cater to concertgoers in a hurry very well, and the Proms has its late-nighters too). But it left many of us wanting more, not just of Ravel in the second half but also of the distinctive Simón Bolívar earthiness, which was given free rein only in one spirited encore. Subtlety, for the most part, was the real name of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The BBC Proms is perhaps the only music festival in the world that would (or could) have programmed performances of Steve Reich in a Peckham car-park and Brahms by the Berlin Philharmonic within a few hours of each other. The audacity of it is glorious, the breadth exhilarating, and the fact that both sold out intensely heartening.But, as ever with Sir Simon Rattle, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. The main substance of the Berlin Philharmonic’s second concert might have been Brahms and Dvořák, but the opener – a work the orchestra have already performed multiple times in Europe Read more ...
David Nice
What do Boulez's Éclat, for 15 instruments, and Mahler's Seventh Symphony, for over 100, have in common? Most obviously, guitar and mandolin, symbols of a wider interest in unusual sonorities. But while Boulez aims, as often, for needle point precision, Mahler uses selective groups, at least up to his finale when he exuberantly exchanges night for day, to create peculiar and unsettling grades of chiaroscuro. No one has ever gone, or is ever likely to go, deeper in the creation of subtle perspectives than Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.There's plenty of éclat, in the usual sense Read more ...
graham.rickson
Erkki Melartin: Traumgesicht, Marjatta, The Blue Pearl Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Lintu, with Soile Isokoski (soprano) (Ondine)Contrary to what you might read, there wasn’t just one composer active in early 20th century Finland. A recent study concluded that Sibelius accounts for 40% of all Finnish music performed worldwide. Sibelius is great, but there are other figures worth investigating. One is Erkki Melartin (1875-1937), active as a conductor and as an influential composition teacher at the Helsinki Conservatoire. On the basis of this appealing anthology, his music is more Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The BBC Proms is the largest classical music festival in the world – an event whose ambition, accessibility and breadth wouldn’t be possible without the Royal Albert Hall and its capacity of well over 5,000 people. But the building that makes this festival possible, that provides the space for the hundreds of Prommers who fill the arena each evening, is also its biggest curse. Its unwieldy, awkward acoustic is a problem that must be faced and resolved every night, and when it comes to Early Music, it’s a resolution that’s partial at best. This B Minor Mass from Les Arts Florissants was no Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Branding, as any marketing manager will tell you, is everything when it comes to selling, and when it comes to selling, classical music is no different from cars, cornflakes or shampoo. It explains why a Mahler orchestral song-cycle would fill the Royal Albert Hall while a similar work by his love-rival and near-contemporary Alexander von Zemlinsky last night left it half empty.Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony is a seven-movement orchestral song-cycle with echoes (as Matthew Rye’s programme note reminded us) not only of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, but also Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. A dialogue Read more ...
David Nice
There is no reason why young musicians shouldn't make something special out of mature thoughts on mortality. Nor is the Albert Hall problematic when it comes to haloing intimate Bach as finely as it does massive Bruckner. The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra glowed in both the large scale and the small last night. Any shortcomings were in senior hands and hearts - possibly those of a usually great conductor, Philippe Jordan, more likely the infirm purpose of his composer, Bruckner. The most surprising disappointment of all came from that most prized of baritones, Christian Gerhaher.First, though Read more ...
graham.rickson
The ingredients should be familiar by now. A plucky range of contestants drawn from across the geographic and social spectrum. A selection of interesting back stories. Demanding judges, their prickly edges softened by a fluffier presenter.We’ve recently had dancing, choirs, sewing, cooking and painting. Now we get All Together Now: The Great Orchestra Challenge, a four-part series pitting five amateur orchestras against each other, the winner being selected to perform at this year’s Proms in the Park. Helmed by Katie Derham, it’s intermittently delightful, and anyone who’s ever played in such Read more ...
David Kettle
It began with opera – Cecilia Bartoli’s pretty much universally adored Norma from Salzburg. And the Edinburgh International Festival ended with opera, too – Mozart’s Così fan tutte, in a co-production with the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Like Norma, it was an updating to more modern times – but one that in this case prompted the International Festival to send out a letter warning of the production’s explicit adult content.In the end, though, they needn't have worried too much. Director Christophe Honoré – a respected writer and film-maker in his native France, even if little known this side of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
If ever there was a Prom to put London’s classical crowd in their place, to remind us (as those outside the capital so frequently and justifiably do) that the city isn’t the be-all and end-all of concert-going, then this was it. It featured three major debuts – all of them overdue, two of them musical hand-me-downs from Birmingham. The CBSO’s much-anticipated new music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla made not only her Proms but also her London debut, bringing with her Hans Abrahamsen’s RPS and Grawemeyer Award-winning song-cycle let me tell you, a London premiere lagging almost three years Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphonies 5-8 Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra/Lan Shui (Orchid)Lively speeds which never sound hurried. Sparky, well-articulated playing, the period brass adding a distinctive colour. Crisp, clear, recording. All present. One of this job’s many pleasures is coming across a disc from an unexpected source which confounds expectations. And here’s Volume 2 of a Beethoven cycle from an orchestra and conductor I’d never heard of. It’s not damning with faint praise to say that I couldn’t believe how good this set is, and for a second I wondered whether I was the victim of a Joyce Hatto Read more ...
Helen Wallace
He still looks every inch the golden boy, but Vasily Petrenko has just turned 40, and next month celebrates a decade with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Time well spent, as this impressive evening revealed: after years of Russian immersion under his crisp command, here’s a band who can conjure Shostakovich’s smoudering darkness, and all the glitter and the grit in Rachmaninov’s third symphony.If the concert belonged to Petrenko, it was probably the promise of Truls Mørk playing Shostakovich’s first cello concerto that had packed the hall. Young Russian Alexey Stadler (pictured below) had Read more ...