Classical music
Matthew Wright
Still only a year out of college, the diversely gifted trumpeter, composer and bandleader Laura Jurd has risen rapidly to prominence, enterprisingly bypassing the ritual of hanging around to be noticed by creating her own scene and ensembles. One of these, the Chaos Collective, this week curated a small festival in which another, the Chaos Orchestra, last night performed a range of new work. Most hotly anticipated were the arrangements of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, celebrating the centenary of its first performance. Django Bates tells the story of Charlie Parker’s spontaneous Read more ...
edward.seckerson
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second residency at the Barbican Centre Riccardo Chailly pulled focus on an entirely new sounding Brahms. Gone were all those bad performance practices, bad habits, from the early 20th century, gone was the lingering romanticism, the willful soupiness, and in with a vengeance came a classical rigour, a lean and hungry vitality. Like so much of what we have come to expect of Chailly the first of this four concert series with its attendant side events brought a total re-evaluation of the composer: no longer the conservative romantic, the polar opposite of Read more ...
graham.rickson
I’d not previously identified much comedic potential in Mahler’s gargantuan Sixth Symphony, a piece which would feature prominently in many people’s lists of most depressing works. Which presumably explains why this astonishing concert wasn’t a sell-out, and why the prevailing gloom prompted a fair few audience members to make an intrusive dash for the exit before the double basses sounded their final pizzicato.Still, despite the darkness, there were giggles to be had. Mahler’s hammer blows of fate are difficult to realise. Here, a poker-faced percussionist precariously wielded a giant mallet Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms Beloved: Symphonies 2 & 4, Clara Schumann Lieder Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi/John Axelrod, with Indra Thomas, Nicole Cabelle (sopranos) (Telarc)There’s a glut of Brahms symphonies on disc this autumn, with live recordings from Valery Gergiev and a new Leipzig cycle on Decca from Riccardo Chailly. As an appetizer, you could do far worse than to investigate this handsomely recorded, well performed Telarc set. Conductor John Axelrod believes that each of Brahms’s four symphonies has a distinct character, all directly inspired by his unrequited love for Clara Read more ...
David Nice
Milton Court’s new concert hall is a mighty small space, but the BBC Singers under their chief conductor David Hill were determined to launch their residency there with a musical epic of world events from Genesis to the post-nuclear era. And they carried it off triumphantly, if with some ear-singeing resonances, in American works from the last 66 years ringing with bright tonalities. The real surprise was to find Nevadan choral guru Eric Whitacre reaching for the stars as confidently, if not as consistently, as Steve Reich in his 1984 masterpiece The Desert Music.Copland did well by this Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Britten’s innate theatricality shines through every single bar of his War Requiem. Atmosphere, drama, suspense, and high emotionalism are to a greater or lesser degree written into the piece (something which the naysayers always latch on to). And yet, with its planes of sound so precisely appropriated there is an acoustical part to be played and from the first tolling of bells and murmured choral entries of the opening “Requiem aeternam” in this performance from Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir it was clear that the sound of the Royal Festival Hall was to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Sean Hickey: Cello Concerto, Clarinet Concerto Dimitry Kouzov (cello), Alexander Fiterstein (clarinet), St Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Lande (Delos)Sean Hickey’s 2007 Cello Concerto solves the problem of balancing soloist with orchestra by keeping the accompaniment spare and light. The brazenly tonal language can’t help recalling several well-known 20th century cello concertos - those by Walton and Shostakovich come to mind. Like them, Hickey enjoys unusual sound combinations – the concerto’s slow movement contains a beguiling, quirky duet for cello and bass clarinet Read more ...
Mark Valencia
Toby Spence’s recovery from thyroid cancer is a cause for rejoicing, but surely it’s time we focused our attention back on his work rather than his medical condition? Apparently not. The pre-publicity for this Wigmore Hall recital made great play of the “profound insights into the human condition” that the singer acquired during his convalescence – a claim that must have ladled extra pressure onto him as he prepared his programme. Spence, though, is one of the most assured and intelligent of today’s princely generation of tenors, and if he harboured any concern that a copywriter’s puff might Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
L’Arpeggiata are everything that crossover should be and everything that this arranged marriage of genres so often isn’t. The work of lutenist Christina Pluhar and her band of period musicians is organic and authentic, a blend of musics that amplify and enrich one another, a conversation between friends and equals.After a too-lengthy drought of UK appearances (save one token visit to the Proms last year), L’Arpeggiata are at last back. Last night’s concert was only the first in a residency at the Wigmore Hall that will take us all the way through to next July, giving the group’s British Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
There’s been a lot of backslapping over the success (so far) of The Rest is Noise festival, the Southbank’s year-long trawl through the music of the 20th century. They’re particularly pleased about the numbers of ignorant musical souls they’ve managed to convert over the past half a year. I hate to break it to them but getting a return on the music of the first half of the 20th century (which has included a surprising amount of barely 20th-century Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Strauss and Sibelius) is the easy bit. Last night we reached the 1940s and 1950s. It’s here that things traditionally get Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bizet: Symphony in C, Jeux d’enfants, Variations chromatiques San Francisco Ballet Orchestra/Martin West (Reference Recordings)Bizet’s only symphony was composed in 1855 as a school exercise. The 17-year-old composer promptly forgot about the piece, and the manuscript was spotted in the archives of the Paris Consevatoire some 80 years later, receiving a belated premiere in 1935. George Balanchine turned it into an abstract ballet in 1947, and the symphony is most often heard in this context. So it makes perfect sense for a crack ballet orchestra to record the work and Martin West’s San Read more ...
philip radcliffe
A “world premiere” of music written by Benjamin Britten just over 70 years ago? Whence this treasure trove of long-lost musical gold? Well, under the title of An American in England, in 1942 Britten wrote the score for a BBC/CBS co-produced series of six radio drama documentaries for transatlantic transmission to make Americans appreciate this country’s war effort. It was jointly commissioned by the War Office and performed by a 62-piece RAF band in full dress uniform.To kick off their new season, the Hallé burrowed into the archive and focused on three of these broadcasts: London by Clipper Read more ...