Classical music
graham.rickson
Dukas: L'Apprenti sorcier, Velléda, Polyeucte Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth (Musicales Actes Sud)Some artists are so prolific that sorting the wheat from the chaff is an impossible task. This isn't the case with Paul Dukas - an intensely self-critical composer who destroyed many of his completed works. It's a surprise to discover that he lived so far into the 20th century, his Paris Conservatoire composition class pupils including a young Olivier Messiaen. Much of what survives is magnificent, though there's only one masterpiece on this latest live recording from François-Xavier Roth Read more ...
David Nice
Valery Gergiev once described Yevgeny Svetlanov’s USSR - later Russian - State Symphony Orchestra to me as “an orchestra with a voice”. Then Svetlanov died and the voice cracked. Which are the other big Russian personalities now? Gergiev’s own Mariinsky? I don’t hear it. Yuri Temirkanov can still bend the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra to his own whim of iron. The Russian National Orchestra was never in the running. But the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, to give its full title, still sounds as deep and rich as it did when I last heard it live nearly 30 years ago.You can Read more ...
David Nice
Nature declined to reveal the Northern Lights over a long winter weekend in Iceland. My hotel was geared up to the spectacle, offering the option of a phone call any time in the night should they appear; but no call came. I only hope the tourists who packed the outward-bound plane hadn’t booked just for that. They’d surely not be disappointed in this most spectacular of lands so long as the weekend package-tour selling point wasn’t an idée fixe, and in any case I suspect half had come to club the night away.Our own Aurora Borealis was simulated in one of the halls of Olafur Eliasson’s Read more ...
David Nice
When I last saw Vadim Repin in action, he was premiering a work of terrific energy and invention which is here to stay, James MacMillan's Violin Concerto. Tonight in Birmingham and on Monday at the Royal Festival Hall he is back on familiar territory with old friends – Vladimir Fedoseyev and the Tchaikovsky (formerly the Moscow Radio) Symphony Orchestra - in one of the pieces which brought him world recognition at 17 as among the handful of truly great violinists in the world today, the Tchaikovsky concerto. The contrast is enough to show the kind of questing player he is, a master Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Vasily Petrenko used his baton like a piratical rapier to galvanise the London Philharmonic violins in their flourishes of derring-do at the start of Berlioz’s Overture Le Corsaire. And the brilliance was in the quicksilver contrasts, the lightness and wit of inflection which lent a piquancy to the panache of this great concert opener. The arrival of the main theme - tantalisingly delayed - was almost balletic in its vivacity and even the final trumpet-led assault suggested a Byronic hero as French as he was feral. One of Petrenko’s great strengths as a conductor lies with the sharpness of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: The Symphonies (And Reflections by Kancheli, Mochizuki, Šerkšnytė, Shchedrin, Staud, Widmann) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons (BR Klassik)When you've a full size modern orchestra performing Beethoven symphonies, there's the worry that everything will sound too easy. Riccardo Chailly's life-enhancing 2011 Leipzig set achieved miracles thanks to lightning speeds and razor-sharp articulation. Mariss Jansons' Bavarian Radio players make an even more sumptuous noise than Chailly's Gewandhausorchester and they could, presumably, perform each of these symphonies on Read more ...
graham.rickson
"The Sage Gateshead is in the top five best concert halls in the world." So thinks Lorin Maazel, and he should know. Attending concerts here is a real pleasure. The audiences are unfailingly friendly. The architecture is inspiring, and the views over the adjacent River Tyne spectacular. The main hall's acoustics are better than anything you'll find in London. Credit is due to a far-sighted Gateshead Council who paid for the building's construction. (They point out that the value of the money ploughed into the local economy since The Sage's opening ten years ago amounts to six times the cost Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The Polish composer Miecyzlaw Weinberg - his Holocaust opera The Passenger caused quite a stir in David Pountney’s premiere staging - has a new champion. The talented young German violinist Linus Roth has taken his music and his legacy to heart in a big way. New recordings of the complete Sonatas and the little-heard Violin Concerto (in a coupling with the Britten Concerto) on the enterprising Challenge label reveal a composer of many facets and a deep and abiding conviction.His music chronicles a life of tragedy, determination, and defiance, and in this podcast Roth talks about Weinberg’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Adams: Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Peter Oundjian (Chandos)Harmonielehre's opening E minor chords ring out with unusual force in this swiftly-paced performance. The benchmark performance remains Michael Tilson Thomas's recent live San Francisco Symphony version, but this new one has some sensational moments. The RSNO's brass and percussion acquit themselves brilliantly, and Chandos's sound is punchy and immediate. Peter Oundjian understands the work's structure, allowing the repetitive ostinati to register as music Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was the first of three Royal Festival Hall concerts during the first half of 2014 from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and its principal conductor Charles Dutoit, all three programmes consisting entirely of French music. The other two will be in May. In between the Swiss-born conductor, a sprightly 77-year-old, will have picked up a Lifetime Achievement gong at the International Classical Music Awards in Warsaw.The relationship between the RPO and Dutoit seems to work well, not least because the repertoire he is working with them on is abolutely his home territory. These were the works Read more ...
David Nice
Oslo is a winter wonderland, and adults seem to be outnumbered by children, flocking from all over Norway to Disney on Ice. It’s the deep snow and the silence in pockets of the city rather than the kids which make me wonder if anyone has set Handel’s Alcina in the icy lair of C S Lewis’s White Witch, with hero Ruggiero as Edmund fed Turkish delight from the magic phial. There's even a captive lion. Francesco Negrin’s straightforwardly magical production - look, no metatext! - at the sparkling newish Oslo Opera House does a fine job conjuring a snow-free magic island full of adult sexual Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Barbican’s ongoing season of baroque operas and oratorios has been a mixed bag. Most recently The Sixteen’s Jephtha was a rather lacklustre affair, leaving me nervous of committing to the many hours of Handel’s beautiful (but protracted) Theodora. But I needn’t have worried. Harry Bicket and The English Concert gave this late work all the pep and personality that was so lacking last week, driving it through its rather uneven acts to a conclusion of sudden pathos and beauty.It helped that Bicket had booked a dream-team of soloists, led by Rosemary Joshua as chilly heroine Theodora Read more ...