Classical music
Glyn Môn Hughes
A double dose of Einaudi may not be the best programming idea. A world premiere in the first half and then a UK premiere in the second part of the concert was, perhaps, overegging the musical recipe. But add to that some Respighi and some Bernstein, with conductor Damian Iorio in charge, and things turned out not so bad after all.Ludovico Einaudi’s Domino for piano and orchestra was another commission by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic to mark their 175th anniversary. It is a three-movement piece: a slow, lugubrious introduction which led – and who would know? – into an andante (subtitled, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we delighted here in a guide who proved as accomplished a presenter as she is a performer of genius.Nicola Benedetti has an Italian name, a Scottish accent, and an utterly charming manner as she enthused, with immense knowledge, over a series of clips from 60 years of television broadcasts of the leading violinists of the day. She made no attempt to Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
It’s always heartening to see a full house for a debut recital, though when expectations run so high, the stakes for the pianist can be dangerously raised. No worries at St John’s Smith Square, though, for Seong-Jin Cho. The diminutive, young South Korean musician who took the platform in front of a capacity crowd last night made waves last autumn upon winning the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and his first recording (on DG) likewise whetted appetites for his first visit to the Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, which is currently being held at St John’s while the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: The French Suites Peter Hill (piano) (Delphian)Start trying to explain exactly why this latest instalment in Peter Hill’s Bach series is so good and it might seem as if you’re dismissing the very things which make it great. This is pianism completely devoid of ego and flash; Hill is a superb technician but never draws undue attention to himself. You forget he’s even there: what we’re hearing is Bach. In all his guises – the earlier, minor key French Suites typically open with introspective Allemandes before the mood lifts. Hill’s way with the opening of Suite No. 1 is typical: Bach’s Read more ...
David Kettle
It was to have been the culmination of principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s Brahms symphony cycle with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But with Ticciati laid up with a herniated disc, we’re told, it fell to the SCO’s principal guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine to step in at the last minute. What Ticciati would have made of the concert, and of the concluding Brahms Fourth, of course, we’ll never know – and it would be churlish to speculate. What Krivine did make of the evening, however, was something really rather remarkable.Remarkable in his passion and energy, his boundless enthusiasm for the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Funny thing, musical fashion. Most listeners would call Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances a popular classic – yet before tonight, I doubt they’d had a professional performance in Birmingham this century. Then there’s the case of Osvaldo Golijov. Remember him? The very fact that it’s taken 10 years for a work as substantial and appealing as his cello concerto Azul to receive this UK premiere tells you all you need to know about how far his stock has fallen – at least for now.It owed this performance to the CBSO’s assistant conductor Alpesh Chauhan and principal cello Eduardo Vassallo (pictured below Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Nature, nationalism, folk culture: the broad themes of Norway’s visual arts map easily onto its music. That has given Leif Ove Andsnes and his colleagues plenty of leeway in planning their musical tributes to the painter Nikolai Astrup. For this, their second programme at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (which is hosting the first ever exhibition of Astrup’s work outside Norway, and the first major one worldwide) the three musicians presented a range of surprising facets of the nation’s musical psyche. We heard the folk themes, of course, but classical and even Baroque elements were also explored Read more ...
Marshall Marcus
2016 began with the passing of Pierre Boulez, arguably the doyen of modernism in the field of classical music. Now, only a couple of months later, it is the turn of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a musician occupying a similar level of singular elevation but this time in what is often described (certainly inadequately in this case) as the "period instrument" movement.Harnoncourt was clearly an inspiration to generations of period instrument musicians, including generations like mine that came to the "movement" in the 1970s and '80s; he taught us not only about grammar and its expression, not simply Read more ...
David Nice
It's rare that a sponsor does more than stump up the money for culture and sometimes request a mention in a review (usually ignored). Last night's godparent, though, the Savings Bank Foundation DNB, is a true self-styled "collaborator", responsible not only for the first major exhibition bringing the remarkable Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup to the world and public-spirited owner of the greatest collection of his paintings and woodcuts, many on display here, but also through its subsidiary Dextra Musica providing the "Kreisler Bergonzi" violin and the Guadagnini violin on loan to the two Read more ...
graham.rickson
Francis Chagrin: Symphonies 1 and 2 BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (Naxos)Born Alexander Pauker in Bucharest in 1906, Francis Chagrin's name change occurred after pitching up in Paris in the early 1930s to pursue a musical career, his personal chagrin a result of disinheritance and an unhappy divorce. His teachers included Dukas (see below) and Nadia Boulanger, Chagrin supporting his studies by playing the piano in nightclubs. He moved to London in 1936, later describing himself as “Romanian by birth, British by nationality and cosmopolitan by inclination.” A busy career took in Read more ...
David Kettle
Just a few days earlier, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra had been doing a pretty convincing impression of a symphony orchestra in a powerful Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony under John Storgårds. And here they were, in crisp, nimble Mozart and Beethoven, being a thoroughly convincing period band – well, with valveless horns, at least. They’re nothing if not versatile.But the real joy of their conductorless concert – and joyful it truly was – was its laying bare of the mechanics of music making itself, and in just about every combination made possible by the absence of a conductor. For that, Read more ...
geoff brown
In the deep recesses of my brain lies a distant memory of an early lesson in musical appreciation in primary school. Excerpts from Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony were being played. The teacher asked us what images came to mind. The answers came fairly quickly, prodded by the music’s title: a babbling brook, a thunderstorm, twittering birds. I was on my way.That childhood scene suddenly popped up during this spotty BBC Symphony Orchestra concert. It featured the latest manifestation of a burgeoning trend to do the audience’s visual imagining for them by commissioning a film-maker and dangling Read more ...