Classical music
edward.seckerson
Precious few musicians can instill such a sense of intimacy into their playing as to have us believing that the Royal Albert Hall is the Wigmore Hall and that their performance is for an audience of one and not six thousand. Mitsuko Uchida is among the select few. Indeed there were feats of projection in pianissimo during her performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons that I’m not sure any other living pianist can achieve in quite the same way. It’s the quality of the soft playing, the limpidity and beauty of the sound Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
There had been a buzz of anticipation about this late-night Prom by Nigel Kennedy, the Palestine Strings and his Orchestra of Life, and it was completely sold out. After a long association with Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and 2.4 million sales of the 1989 album, Nigel Kennedy doesn't seek or need either forgiveness or permission to open the doors of this music to other tendencies.“Let's just do it” is the approach he defines in the programme, where he also praises the young players (their ages range from 12 to 23) of the Palestine Strings for the “rich, wholehearted and unique” spirit in which Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s hard to find an overarching theme to last night’s Prom from John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic. We veered from a solidly patriotic opening (Walton, Rubbra) through the high romance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto to the murkier stylistic no man’s land of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp. Musical emotions were running universally high however, and the cumulative effect was dramatic in the moment, but oddly unsatisfying on reflection.There was nothing equivocal about the Bruch however, showcasing the talents of the young Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang. Frang is the real deal, as serious a Read more ...
David Nice
It was mostly Russian night at the Proms, and mostly music you could dance to, as a hand jiving Arena Prommer rather distractingly proved in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. Even Prokofiev’s elephantine Second Piano Concerto was transformed into the ballet music Serge Diaghilev thought it might become in 1914. Much of this was thanks to the fleet feet and mobile shoulders of febrile BBC Philharmonic conductor Gianandrea Noseda. But even he could do very little with the odd man out in every way, Edward Cowie’s Earth Music I.One blunt question has to be asked: why a BBC commission Read more ...
David Nice
On the one occasion I went to Bayreuth, I made the mistake of seeing The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin after the best of Ring cycles. At the Proms we’ve had a week of serious Wagnerian withdrawal symptoms, so Tannhäuser was never going to feel like too much or too little of a good thing. In any case, this always fascinating if dramatically primitive early clash of sex and religion is shot through with later passages composed in between work on the Ring, most of them included in last night's 1875 hybrid version. And Donald Runnicles is not a conductor to stand in the shadow of Daniel Barenboim Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The moment when Alfred Brendel shuffled on stage during the Verbier Festival’s 20th Anniversary Concert not to play, but to turn pages for long-time colleague Emmanuel Ax, expressed everything that is so special, so extraordinary about this festival. Walking off together, arms around each other’s shoulders, these were not just international soloists, they were two great old men and two even greater musicians. Verbier has made a lot of good friends during its 20-year history – a mere blink of the eye, as classical festivals go – and in this birthday year it was no surprise that they might just Read more ...
graham.rickson
Timo Andres: Home Stretch Timo Andres (piano), Metropolis Ensemble/Andrew Cyr (Nonesuch)Begin with Timo Andres’s realisation of Mozart’s Coronation piano concerto. Mozart omitted to write down the soloist’s left hand part, so Andres provides his own. Andrew Cyr’s Metropolis Ensemble go out of their way to provide an introductory tutti of rare poise and grace. Within a few minutes of the soloist’s entry, you’ll either skip round the room in delight or storm out in disgust. This is the musical equivalent of drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. You sense that the playfulness and anarchy Read more ...
David Nice
You wait years for a live performance to test whether Tippett’s Second Symphony is a masterpiece, and then two come along within six months. Both are due to the missionary zeal of the BBC Symphony Orchestra management, determined to give an overshadowed English composer a voice in Britten centenary year. But while Martyn Brabbins convinced me totally of the Second’s dynamic journey back in April at the Barbican, Oliver Knussen caught its rarefied sounds but not always its progressive sense. Many listeners might have left with a feeling of “very lovely at times, but is that really a symphony?” Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Reviewing last night’s Prom of British Light Music feels a bit like getting all AA Gill on your granny’s Victoria sponge. The collage of musical morsels from Bantock, Arnold, Coates and Elgar is music made with love, for pleasure, by composers who rated enjoyment over admiration. It’s music that smothers critical appraisal gently but firmly in its tweed-clad bosom, killing you with musical kindness. It’s also music that needs Xenakis-like precision if it is to come off, and more pep even than that.It’s a combination we’ve come to expect from the John Wilson Orchestra who batter their way into Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The “Turning Point” in Colin Matthews’ so-named orchestral piece is a change of attitude, a sudden seriousness of purpose, a great effort of will to stop moving and take stock of where it - whatever it is - is going. That Matthews did actually stop mid-composition because, precisely as the piece tells us, he wasn’t sure he was enjoying the ride anymore is one of those extra-musical bits of information that perhaps holds the key to understanding the motivation behind it. Matthews says the piece wasn’t/isn’t about anything, that it’s an abstract and there’s an end of it. The listener may beg to Read more ...
edward.seckerson
And so Wotan’s ravens flew home and at the twilight’s last gleaming the immortals were consumed by fire and water. All was finally and irrevocably redeemed by the power of love, and the most beautiful of all the leitmotifs in Wagner’s Ring rolled out across the Albert Hall like a benediction. It was a defining moment in Proms history, no doubt, and was greeted with a few moments of perfect - and I mean perfect - silence.After minutes of rapturous applause, Daniel Barenboim spoke spontaneously and without a microphone to the huge capacity audience (pictured below). He talked of the way Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Such has been the justifiable flow of superlatives this week about the Berlin Staatskapelle's Ring conducted by Barenboim, the centrepiece of the BBC Proms' Wagner bicentenary celebration, it would have been easy to forget that the 2013 Proms season contains not just those four, but seven complete Wagner operas.Last night's performance of Tristan und Isolde was placed – respecting the chronological order in which Wagner composed them - between the Berliners' Siegfried on Friday and Götterdammerung on Sunday.The performance which Bychkov coaxed from all sections of the BBCSO was a fabulous Read more ...