Classical music
Gavin Dixon
Renée Fleming recently announced her imminent retirement from the opera stage. But she has no plans to stop performing, and will instead devote her time to recitals and concerts. Yesterday’s excellent performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra bodes well for her new career focus. And she’s not one to rest on her laurels, here giving UK premieres of two new works written for her voice, ever the adventurous artist, always playing to her strengths.Now in her late 50s, Fleming can hardly be said to sound young. She has lost some of the flexibility in her tone, and no longer projects as freely or Read more ...
graham.rickson
Dutilleux: Le Loup, and other early works Vincent Le Texier (baritone), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS)Henri Dutilleux's mature orchestral output can be squeezed onto a handful of CDs, so this anthology of early works plugs a useful gap. Extracts from the 1953 ballet Le Loup have been recorded before, but Pascal Rophé's Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire give us the complete score. It's wonderful stuff, beautifully orchestrated and full of delicious things, my favourite being the plaintive, howling bassoon solo in the second scene. Sections of the work recall Read more ...
Richard Bratby
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's appointment of the Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as its new Music Director won’t have surprised many concertgoers in Birmingham – or indeed regular readers of theartsdesk. The post has been vacant since Andris Nelsons’ premature departure in summer 2015, and the last few months in Birmingham have seen a string of concerts clearly intended as thinly-disguised auditions for conductors of various ages and nationalities.But the buzz that developed after Gražinytė-Tyla’s short-notice CBSO debut last July was hard to ignore in Birmingham, and Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
All three Grieg violin sonatas in a single recital may seem like too much of a good thing. The similarities between them outweigh the differences, which are more of quality than intent. But, when heard in chronological order, they provide a fascinating précis of Grieg’s artistic development, from the youthful and cheerfully unsophisticated First, through the terser and more tightly argued Second, to the Third, the composer’s undisputed masterpiece in the genre.Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud (main picture) is clearly a native speaker when it comes to Grieg. Folk music plays different Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
With Andris Nelsons now moved to pastures new, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is without a chief conductor, so for this performance in Saffron Walden (repeating a programme given in Birmingham) it worked with a guest at the podium, the young Israeli Lahav Shani. At only 27, he’s something of a prodigy, winner of the prestigious Bamberg competition and now making his debut appearances with the world’s great orchestras.Technically, Shani is an accomplished leader, with excellent baton technique and clear ideas about the sound he is looking for. He also has an excellent ear for detail Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
In recent performances of the First Symphony under Markus Stenz and the Seventh under Jaap van Zweden, the LPO have burnished their credentials as London’s best Beethoven orchestra. With the low-key oversight of Vladimir Jurowski, they took the Sixth to another level, perhaps the level at which the twentysomething tyro Berlioz heard the symphony and said, "I must write that for myself". And with the Symphonie fantastique, he did.So much was unremarkably right. The speeds, just a notch under the composer’s metronome marks, proceeding at a gentle canter with the steadiest of pulses that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Starry Night – Préludes Book 1 and Other Works Michael Lewin (piano) (Sono Luminus)Michael Lewin's earlier Debussy anthology was excellent, and this second volume also hits the spot. In the first set of Préludes, Lewin gets just about everything right, each piece flawlessly characterised. Take “Des pas sur la neige”, its halting footsteps just desolate enough, followed by a truly furious “Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest”. “La fille aux cheveux de lin” is coolly understated, and all the more beautiful for it. “La danse de Puck” and “Minstrels” glitter. Colin Matthews' clever orchestral Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The French composer Henri Dutilleux would have been 100 last Friday if he had lived that long, which in fact he very nearly did; he was 97 when he died in 2013. Five years before that he had been awarded an honorary doctorate at Cardiff University, amid pomp and ceremony and performances of several of his works. So it made sense that Cardiff, including the university, should have been at the forefront of his centenary celebrations this past week, including a pair of concerts by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and a symposium on Dutilleux put on by the university’s enterprising School of Read more ...
David Nice
Risk-taking is what gives so many of Vladimir Jurowski's concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra their special savour. But did two risks for last night's programme pay off? I was as excited as many Russians and hardcore Russophiles at the rare visit of legendary 73-year-old cellist Natalia Gutman, and it could only be interesting to hear the little-heard, hour-long first version of Bruckner's Third Symphony. But interesting, with a few flashes of inspiration, was as far as it went in both cases.Gutman's recording of the two Shostakovich Cello Concertos is up there with the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, premiered in 1909, is from perhaps the last era in which pieces readily found favour with both critics and audiences alike. It launched Vaughan Williams’s reputation as a major national figure at the age of 38, and has become a favourite of choral societies ever since. But looking beyond its status as a choral warhorse, how does it hold up more than a century after it was written?At the time it was both following a fashion and striking out in a new direction. The first decade of the 20th century saw a number of major works on the theme of the sea, including Read more ...
David Nice
It was another Davis, the late Colin rather than the very alive Andrew, who used to be master of Berlioz's phenomenally inventive opera for orchestra with its novel explanatory prologue and epilogue. I like to think he'd have been looking down fascinated by last night's very different miracle of pace, clarity and ideal blend of instrumental and vocal song.Shakespeare might have approved of what he'd inspired, too, though like rather a lot due to happen in the 400th anniversary year, hardly any of his words are to be found here; this is Berlioz's "What I feel about Romeo and Juliet". Once past Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Violin Concerto, Bartók: Violin Concerto No 1 Janine Jansen (violin) Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, London Symphony Orchestra/Antonio Pappano (Decca)Coupling music by Brahms and Bartók makes enormous sense, given the former composer's penchant for Hungarian dance music. Janine Jansen's studio recording of Bartók's Violin Concerto No 1 makes a great case for a work that isn't often heard – presumably as its two movements last just 20 minutes, shorter than the first movement of Brahms's concerto. Antonia Pappano's responsive LSO are suitably refined accompanists in Read more ...