Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
Goldilocks would not have been a good conductor. There’s a reason why there isn’t a dynamic marking between mezzo forte and mezzo piano. Mezzo on its own would be a pretty bland state of affairs, sat solidly in an inoffensive state of not-too-loud-and-not-too-soft, not swelling to a crescendo or pining away to a decrescendo, but content with a steady sonic compromise. Last night the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment gave us a decidedly mezzo Messiah, a performance that couldn’t seem to galvanise itself into any decisive emotion.Perhaps audiences are to blame. Or maybe concert halls. If Read more ...
geoff brown
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Greed Tuesday: they all vanished from memory once the first notes of Siglo de Oro’s Christmas-themed concert started. This young British choir, now six years old, began with what’s already become a modern classic, Jan Sandström’s magical setting of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, where the first staggered entries open like a fan and we drift thereafter in slow-motion bliss. Not for the first time, not for the last, I gave thanks to Spitalfields Music’s Winter Festival for offering balm in a whirling world. In terms of packaging, Patrick Allies’ choir, formed when Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Tamara Stefanovich and Colin Currie – a dream team for Birtwistle’s The Axe Manual. Both are new music specialists with a gift for grace and dexterity, even in the most complex works. The score sets up a range of sophisticated relationships between piano and percussion, from sympathetic resonances to complex interplays of stretto and hocket. Yet none of this fazes the two players, nor ever challenges their close ensemble, seemingly telepathic in its precision.The percussion setup is based around a large marimba, with a collection of mostly untuned instruments arranged at either side. Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was “Officium – the final concert.” The Hilliard Ensemble took their decision around three years ago to disband as a group, and – for three of them – to retire, rather than to re-launch with a new generation of voices. They are now on the road doing a series of farewells. Their final bow will be at the Wigmore Hall on December 20th, and between now and then, their victory lap takes in Taunton, Gdansk, Châlons-en-Champagne, Florence and Cologne. This one in Cambridge was the opportunity to bask, for one very last time, in the completely unforeseen level of success – around 1.5 million Read more ...
geoff brown
In words and music Harrison Birtwistle isn’t always as gruff as he’s been painted. Interviewed over the summer during one of his 80th birthday Prom concerts, the composer tossed off enough humorous remarks to suggest that a new career could almost beckon as a stand-up comedian touring the northern clubs. A lightness of touch, even bonhomie, was also apparent in the UK premiere of his wondrous Piano Concerto, unveiled last night in the course of the kind of head-expanding concert that regularly puts Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra ahead of its local competition. Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Sir Harrison Birtwistle has never sought to make life easy for his audiences, nor for interviewers, often giving short shrift to both. His music is as uncompromising as his carefully curated public persona. But fortunately last night we were treated to more notes and less chat than the printed programme threatened.In an awkward onstage exchange at the start, presenter Tom Service asked Birtwistle whether the first piece had a sense of danger about it. The answer: "I don’t know. I just wrote a piece of music". This bon mot, rewarded with a round of applause, is either refreshingly down to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There have been legendary conductors, and then there was Herbert von Karajan. He was a colossus of post-World War Two classical music, equipped with fearsome technical mastery allied to a vaguely supernatural gift for extracting exquisite sounds from orchestras. But that wasn't all. An expert skier with a passion for high-performance cars and flying his own jet, he was as charismatic as a movie star or sporting idol.John Bridcut's superb profile surveyed the Salzburg-born Karajan as if he were Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn, considering the contradictions in his character as though studying Read more ...
graham.rickson
Prokofiev: Symphonies 1 and 2, Sinfonietta Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits (Onyx)Only two of Prokofiev's seven symphonies seem to be performed with any regularity. Of the remainder, nos. 2 and 4 remain the shadiest, so it's pleasing to hear a blistering, cogent account of the former. Prokofiev's friend Konstantin Balmont described the composer as "a sunny Scythian". Knowing that, it's far easier to enjoy this 1925 symphony's many positives. The first movement's relentless energy does sound undeniably positive in Kirill Karabits's hands, and his Bournemouth Symphony Read more ...
David Nice
If Brahms’s First Symphony has long been dubbed “Beethoven’s Tenth”, then the 23-year-old Rachmaninov’s First merits the label of “Tchaikovsky’s Seventh” (a genuine candidate for that title, incidentally, turns out to be a poor reconstruction from Tchaikovsky’s sketches by one Bogatryryev). Yet unlike the other near-contemporary works in last night’s programme, Szymanowski’s Concert Overture and Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, it has a disturbing individuality, a heavy heart that is truly worn “inside out”, as Vladimir Jurowski’s season-long Rachmaninov festival with his London Philharmonic Read more ...
David Nice
In one way, it makes sense to give your London comeback concert in the venue where you made your European debut 44 years ago. Yet the Royal Festival Hall is a mighty big place for a violin-and-piano recital. Kyung Wha Chung had no problem nearly filling it last night with an audience including whole Korean families, but might have wished she hadn’t in the ailment-ridden dead of winter; her look could have killed a coughing child ("go and get a glass of water" is what I think I heard her say, from my very distant seat). There were swathes of panache in an emotionally demanding programme, but Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Even the most reluctant of completists should find the prospect of the Beethoven works for cello and piano undaunting. In their totality, these pieces consist of just five sonatas and three sets of variations, which fit neatly on to just two CDs, or occupy two recital programmes. The works are also very important in the early development of the solo cello repertoire. Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford describes the “confident, ebullient, fresh and youthful” sonatas of Op 5 as a genre which the composer, at the time, had “virtually to himself".French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and Russian-born Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Symphonies 1-4, Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Violin Concerto Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann with Maurizio Pollini (piano) and Lisa Batiashvili (violin) (DG)Another nicely packaged, reasonably priced Brahms box hits the shelves. DVDs of these symphony performances have already been issued, but the concertos (now contained here on a single DVD), have previously appeared on CD. All a bit irritating – why couldn't DG have stuck to the same format for the whole lot? Carping aside, these are extremely enjoyable, cogent readings. Riccardo Chailly's recent Leipzig Brahms cycle fully Read more ...