Classical music
Jessica Duchen
At all of 22, the British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has already become one of the best-loved solo pianists in the UK, with an international career that spans the globe. A remarkable child prodigy from Southend-on-Sea, he first shot to prominence when he won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2004, aged only 11, amazing audiences with the maturity and sensitivity of his musicianship.Now, having completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he can boast a recording contract with Decca and a track record that includes – among many Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Latvia likes to be different. At least that’s the message they sent out with the cultural programme marking the start of the country’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Pomp and circumstance were out, and instead we got a Cage-inspired happening, an audio/visual presentation that was many things: part video installation, part performance art. The only thing you couldn’t describe it as was a choral concert.Production values were high, reflecting perhaps the diplomatic motivations. Above the stage was positioned a frame incorporating four huge screens in a rectangular formation, Read more ...
geoff brown
The mixed grilled school of programme-making is not for the JACK Quartet. Contemporary, contemporary, and contemporary: that was the bill of fare last night at this challenging recital offered by the young American group, graduates of the Eastman School of Music, who derive their capitalised title from the initial letters of the members’ first names. Like the Arditti String Quartet, one of their mentors, you’d never find them playing Schubert. Even someone as gutsy and game-changing as Beethoven appears to be well off the menu. A pity, in a way. For the three knotty pieces Read more ...
David Nice
Was 1911 the best ever year for music? Works premiered or composed then include Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony he’d completed in outline by the time of his death that May, Sibelius’s most austere masterpiece, the Fourth – for which the little oddity which opened last night’s concert, The Dryad, sounded like a sketch – and Nielsen’s Third, self-subtitled “Espansiva” but in this performance more like the “Inexhaustible” to blaze a path for the “Inextingishuable” Fourth. Even Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto of 1909, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: St John Passion Berliner Philharmoniker, Members of the Rudfunkchors Berlin, Soloists/Sir Simon Rattle, with staging by Peter Sellars (Berliner Philharmoniker)You'd happily settle for an audio recording of Sir Simon Rattle's version of Bach's St John Passion, but director Peter Sellars' input makes its presentation as a DVD essential. Daniel Finkernagel and Alexander Lück's stylish, unfussy video direction is only mentioned in small print on the booklet's last page – a pity, as their work adds hugely to this issue's success. Sellars' ritualistic, spare conception is undeniably Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
For his second programme this week with the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle conducted variations on a programme he’s been doing for years. So what’s the theme? Invention and hysteria, you might say. Berg’s Marie in Wozzeck and Stravinsky’s virgin in The Rite of Spring both meet gory if wordless ends. Ligeti’s Chief of Police in Le grand macabre reverses roles and deals death to anyone in her path. Or at least threatens it. So much for hysteria. Invention? In 1909 Webern ripped up the textbook of orchestral colour and wrote his own with the Orchestral Pieces Op.6, just as Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This recital had looked so good on paper. The charismatic Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, with Itamar Golan at the piano, would bring all the brooding darkness of late '60s Shostakovich to life, and would then charm and finally dazzle in Ravel. In the hall on the night, and in particular in the second half, she didn't quite live up to such expectations.The Shostakovich Violin Sonata of 1968 was written for David Oistrakh, after the composer had lived through periods of illness and severe depression. It is a very bleak work indeed. It also has a strong performing tradition by violinists who Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Ian Bostridge’s relationship with Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise goes back 30 years. Many of those years have been spent in the public eye (and ear), allowing us to watch the tenor grow and grow-up with this music. It’s been over a decade since his first recording of the cycle with Leif Ove Andsnes, and almost that long since David Alden’s filmed version; the Bostridge who tours the cycle with Thomas Adès this year is quite a different singer and performer.The most marked shift is one of tone. Listen back to the Andsnes recording and you’ll find a singer alive and sensitive to the cycle’s Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Sir Simon Rattle wants you to hear Das Paradies und die Peri. He is convinced that Schumann’s oratorio is one of the great undiscovered masterpieces of the Romantic era. To that end, he has led performances with the Berlin Philharmonic and an all-star cast, and has now brought that cast to London to convert the Brits.He’s right. It is magnificent, and last night it received as good a performance as could be imagined. Every strength of Schumann’s art is showcased. The solo vocal writing is emotive and imaginative. The chorus is used prominently, and to excellent effect. The orchestration Read more ...
geoff brown
There’s nothing like Terry Riley’s In C to reawaken a past epoch. Of variable length, built from 53 melodic fragments, this minimalist construct of 1964 was almost designed to be performed and experienced lying on cushions in a marijuana haze – though a state somewhat ruptured by the home listener’s need to stir and turn over the vinyl LP in order to hear the other side. There was also the problem, at least in Britain, of the original LP’s inner sleeve, incongruously plastered with ads for the honeyed voice of easy-listening balladeer Andy Williams. As if…At Kings Place last night, I smelt no Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Simón Bolívar orchestra is the musical answer to the question “Would you like to supersize that?” A youth orchestra in bulk, if no longer in name, the ensemble has made a signature of its heft, making repertoire work on its own terms rather than adjusting itself to fit. On Thursday night, full-fat Beethoven and Wagner that threatened to overspill in the generosity of their gestures, so how would the orchestra fare with Mahler’s mighty Fifth Symphony?If I say that the Simón Bolívar Orchestra are not an ensemble you really want to hear two nights running that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Janáček: Glagolitic Mass, The Eternal Gospel Prague Philharmonic Choir, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra/Tomáš Netopil (Supraphon)Lack of faith has never been an impediment to composing effective, moving religious music. Britten and Vaughan Williams managed it. As did Janáček, whose eccentric, vibrant Glagolitic Mass should leave you reeling. As it does in this performance: the young Czech conductor Tomáš Netopil nails the work's exultant positivity and doesn't undersell the eccentricities. Janáček smoothed out many of the Mass's rough edges before publication; Netopil's performance aims Read more ...