Classical music
David Nice
A peninsular spirit of place and the greatest of instrumentalists drew me a second time to the eastern nook (hence the “Neuk”) of Fife. But could a second report for theartsdesk be justified – wasn’t the premise the same for the 11th East Neuk Festival as it had been at the 10th? Not quite. Compelling violinist and former leader of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Alexander Janiczek had set up “The Retreat”, a kind of Britten-Pears School for this Aldeburgh of the north, in which he and fellow masters would coach and play chamber music with 10 young musicians at the start of their professional Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last week the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow was rung down with a sigh of relief for the home team, with once again a Russian pianist in possession of the gold medal, Dmitry Masleev following 2011’s Daniil Trifonov. It was all very satisfactory for President Putin as he delivered his speech at the winners’ gala, being Tchaikovsky’s 175th anniversary year, but it was not a result that many disputed. The modest Siberian, 27, is a thoughtful pianist as well as a powerful one in traditional Russian manner.All the same, Masleev was not the pianist who will be remembered as Read more ...
Richard Bratby
“I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose in Lichfield, that he might see for once real civility”. In Lichfield, it’s more or less obligatory to begin with a quotation from Dr Johnson – no lover of music, although his native city does have a modest musical pedigree to set alongside its literary hall of fame. Muzio Clementi lived here briefly in 1830; Havergal Brian sang in the Cathedral choir and the late Percy Young – composer, Elgar biographer, and much-loved friend of the Cathedral library – is buried in the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Medtner: Piano Sonatas Alessandro Taverna (Somm)It's tempting to dismiss Nikolai Medtner without having heard a note of his music. Those who dismiss him as a less flamboyant Rachmaninov contemporary are making a huge mistake. Prokofiev enjoyed playing Medtner's piano sonatas, and Rachmaninov once described his friend as the greatest of living composers. Post-Revolution, Rachmaninov eventually settled in the US and spent his final days in glamorous Beverly Hills. Poor Medtner ended up in a semi-detached house in suburban Golders Green, dying there in 1951. Become a Medtner fan and you'll veer Read more ...
simon.broughton
2015 is the "Year of Mexico in the United Kingdom" which is why we’ ve got an exhibition on the Mayas in Liverpool, masked wrestlers Luche Libre at the Albert Hall and the country’ s leading symphony orchestra on a debut UK tour. The Mexico Philharmonic was founded at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in 1936 and is the oldest symphony orchestra in the country. It made waves with the excellent Mexican conductor Eduardo Mata in the Sixties and Seventies and the British-born Jan Latham-Koenig has been Music Director since 2011.The concert opened with a Buxtehude organ Chaconne Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach to Moog: A Realisation for Electronics and Orchestra Craig Leon (Moog synthesizers and conductor), Jennifer Pike (violin), Sinfonietta Cracovia (Sony)Each new year throws up swathes of composer-related anniversaries, but 2015 also marks 50 years since the appearance of Robert Moog's first modular synthesizer. Plus it's the tenth anniversary of Moog's death. 1968 saw the appearance of Moog devotee Wendy Carlos's album Switched-On Bach, so it's fitting that the same record label (or its modern equivalent) sees fit to release this disc. In an age where programs like GarageBand allow any Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Over the past decade Krystian Zimerman and Sir Simon Rattle have created and evolved a performing idea of Brahms’s D minor piano concerto which is still remarkable for its considered weight and grimly imposing grandeur, Michelangelo’s Mosè in music.As played at the Barbican in its latest appearance, hardly so refined as in Berlin but undeniably exciting, that idea of the concerto has attenuated and intensified, not quite towards self-parody but moving ever farther from the sense of a piece from 1858, written squarely if boldly in the tradition of Beethoven by a 25-year-old composer Read more ...
David Nice
Cleopatra in her barge gliding down the nave of Southwark Cathedral? Only figuratively, in the hypnotic “Half the Fun” movement of Duke Ellington’s constantly surprising Shakespeare compendium Such Sweet Thunder. Still, it wouldn’t be that much stranger than the combination of a jazz orchestra and a chamber choir – so superlative as not to need the “youth” in their names observed – celebrating Shakespeare in his local place of worship.It worked brilliantly. That was partly because not only the layered sound of the National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain but also, more surprisingly, the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When The Man with the Golden Arm was released in British cinemas in January 1956, it was given an “X” certificate by the then British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), which excluded those under 16 from seeing it. Cuts were made to scenes showing the details of drug preparation to obtain that category, and it hit screens at 114 minutes. Some violence was excised, too. A 119-minute version was first seen on home video in 1992 with a “15” certificate. Its last home video release in 2007 shared both the certification and the longer length. This sparkling new DVD restoration is also rated “15”, runs Read more ...
David Kettle
Ebb of Winter felt about right. It’s one of Peter Maxwell Davies’s most recent works, a yearning for the brightness and warmth of spring at the end of an Orcadian winter, written in 2013 for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 40th anniversary. And it was given a welcome re-run (on the summer solstice, no less) as part of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s second concert at the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney, what must surely be Britain’s furthest-flung classical music celebration, founded back in 1977 by Maxwell Davies himself.But winter hadn’t quite ebbed enough: with blankets of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Yotam Haber: Torus – Chamber Music 2007-2014 (Roven Records)Yotam Haber's We Were All is a vibrant setting of a short poem by Andrea Cohen. I first heard it while my iPod was in shuffle mode, and thought for a few seconds that I was listening to a work by Louis Andriessen. There's something of the Dutch composer's sharp clarity; what's the point in setting an interesting text if you then set it in such a way that audiences can't make out the words? Soprano, counter-tenor and tenor sing Cohen's poem to a transparent, though extrovert chamber ensemble backing. There's a brilliant moment Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Fair exchange? German humour, perhaps? We send Her Maj off to the Fatherland for a State Visit, and the Embassy of the Federal Republic in London reciprocates by bringing us the popular singing phenomenon – “national institution”, as he was described in last night's introductory speech – Max Raabe, for an early celebration of 25 years of German reunification. The 52-year-old Raabe, with his boyish looks, slicked-back hair, impeccably suited in white tie and tails, is Germany's leading custodian of the songs of the Weimar era. He is quite some phenomenon in his home country, where he performs Read more ...