Classical music
Gavin Dixon
Michael Tilson Thomas is in town to celebrate his 70th birthday. And he's with old friends – he’s been working with the London Symphony since 1970, including six years as principal conductor. There is still plenty of chemistry here, and the orchestra’s strengths perfectly complement his, the clarity and boldness of his interpretations given voice in the orchestra’s precise ensemble and rich sonorities. The concert was a gala event with a retrospective feel, and each piece was well chosen to highlight an aspect of the long and fruitful relationship.Colin Matthews’ Hidden Variables ticks many Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Andrew Manze chose an all-English programme for his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Clarity of texture and disciplined, propulsive tempos are the hallmarks of his conducting, the results of many years as a violinist and ensemble leader in the period instrument movement. They may not seem ideal qualities for the early 20th century romanticism of Elgar, Ireland and Walton, but all of the works responded well to Manze’s treatment, each in its own way.While he clearly has an ear for detail, Manze is never inclined to constrain his players or to limit expansive orchestral textures. Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
There is everything of the quiet achiever about Dobrinka Tabakova. The softly-spoken Bulgarian-British composer was born in 1980 into a music-loving family of doctors, scientists and academics in the town of Plovdiv in Bulgaria and moved to England in 1991. She has garnered composition prizes from Amsterdam, London, New York, Neuchâtel, Vienna and Warsaw. She has been featured composer or composer-in-residence in Utrecht, Sigulda (Latvia), Lockenhaus (Austria), Dubrovnik, Berlin, Hong Kong and Oxford, and will have a major focus on her work this year at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival and at Read more ...
graham.rickson
Wim Henderickx: Disappearing in Light HERMESensemble/Wim Henderickx (HERMESensemble) Flemish composer Wim Henderickx's music is a bewildering mixture of influences – of Stravinsky, Bartók, Messiaen, Xenakis and Ligeti. All of which are combined with a refreshingly un-woolly injection of Eastern philosophy. In Henderickx's words, “For me, non-Western cultures are more than a source of inspiration... I think about how I can integrate other cultures in a pure and really sincere manner.” And he succeeds; this disc rarely feels like Western art music, and Henderickx manages to juggle his Read more ...
David Nice
Shock and Shakespeare were the two forces that powered a typically thoughtful programme from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. I said as much in a pre-performance talk where the links weren’t hard to find: that also means coming clean at the start about my involvement. But the world needs to know about this one. With no intention to write about the event, I found myself too astonished to keep quiet by the brilliant work of Brazilian Carlos Miguel Prieto, a conductor I haven’t encountered before, and struck afresh by the top-notch invention in James MacMillan’s The Berserking, now 25 years Read more ...
David Nice
Having manoeuvred to get a new concert hall for London earmarked in principle, Sir Simon Rattle has finally agreed, as we thought he would, to take charge of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017. By then, he'll by 62 (though I thought the big idea was to leave Berlin at 64, an appropriate benchmark for a Liverpudlian).Yes, it’s a good move in many ways, even if I can’t be as unreservedly ecstatic as the press at large, which has at least done the classical world the service of giving it a recognition outside the arts pages thanks to Rattle’s recent visit with the Berlin Philharmonic. Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The BBC Radio 3 announcer came on stage to introduce the concert and promised us "the 100 minutes" of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in the second half. Some of us smiled and assumed he (or his scriptwriter) had made a howler. Last time the Eighth was done in London, Jukka-Pekka Saraste led a vigorous account, not unduly rushed, taking under 75 minutes. The announcer, did we but know it, was giving us fair warning. Three hours later, boos and cheers mingled as the Brahmsian figure of Leif Segerstam shuffled off stage, wreathed in unBrahmsian smiles. London audiences boo at horrid German purveyors Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
There's a whole fairytale backstory to be told here. The residents of Saffron Walden and the surrounding area still can't quite believe their good fortune. The North Essex town and its state secondary school have been gifted a new 730-seat concert hall with a fine acoustic by a philanthropist with twin passions for state education and classical music.The hall's run of good fortune has continued, right up to this concert, arguably its biggest coup to date. The hall's manager Angela Dixon had managed to book Nicola Benedetti for just one performance, and when all the tickets for the violinist's Read more ...
stephen.walsh
You might imagine that composers in general would write songs. On my way to the BCMG’s programme of pieces from the songbook assembled by John Woolrich and Mary Wiegold for the Composers’ Ensemble 30-odd years ago, I tried and failed to think of a significant 19-century composer who didn’t write songs. But in the 20th century song seems to have become a dirty word, associated with mere popularist geniuses like Gershwin, Irving Berlin and John Lennon, then grafted back on to “classical” (as opposed to “music”) as a CD track label. “Serious” modern composers, it turns out, have to be more Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: The Six Cello Suites Viola de Hoog (Vivat)Two hours of solo instrumental music may sound daunting. Bach's six cello suites are anything but. They were composed when the cello was beginning to supersede the fretted viola de gamba, an instrument well-suited to polyphony, whereas the cello's design and tuning pattern means that the harmonies usually have to be implied, the chords broken and arpeggiated. This gives the Bach suites a very distinctive feel, and newcomers could do worse than dipping into Canadian journalist Eric Siblin's engaging, accessible exploration. Bach's music is Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Even by trumpeters’ standards, Håkan Hardenberger is a flamboyant figure. He sports a sharp, tailored suit and a wing-collared shirt, and his stage presence is all swagger and pomp. HK Gruber has captured his spirit perfectly in his jazzy, experimental trumpet concerto Aerial, which has become the trumpeter’s calling card. That proved the highlight of the evening here, though, as it was followed by a lacklustre Mahler Five, a rare disappointment from the usually reliable conductor Andris Nelsons.The Gruber concerto is in two movements – one slow, one fast – but even in the slow movement there Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The brothers Erik, Ken, and Mark Schumann founded the Schumann Quartet in 2007 and it might well have been an all-family affair had the cellist’s twin sister chosen to switch from violin to viola and join them. The Schumann brothers are of German-Japanese heritage – an interesting mix of temperaments – and perhaps because of their sister they were drawn to a female becoming the fourth among equals. The Estonian violist Liisa Randalu did so in 2012 and in this audio podcast she is spokesperson for the group – only fitting since she is at the centre of the sound – and talks about the quartet’s Read more ...