Classical music
graham.rickson
Volodos plays Mompou Arcadi Volodos (piano) (Sony)This is excellent, and a brilliant introduction to an under-appreciated composer. Frederic Mompou spent most of his long life in Barcelona, dying there aged 94 in 1987. The piano pieces collected on Arcadi Volodo’s handsomely recorded disc are consistently electrifying – in a very low-key way. Mompou rarely shouts; the melodic lines tend to be spare and unadorned, occasionally suggesting Satie. He was a master of compression and concision, a composer able to express himself with the slightest of gestures. Several of the later pieces Read more ...
graham.rickson
Maxim Vengerov and Itamar Golan – music by Bach, Beethoven, Wieniawski and Brahms (Wigmore Hall Live)Violinist Maxim Vengerov’s recent Wigmore Hall comeback was rapturously received on this site. It’s superbly captured on this recording; microphones placed up close without sacrificing the beauty of the hall’s acoustic. Bravely, Vengerov opened the recital with Bach’s D minor Partita. In a reading that’s one of the best out there – big-boned, justifiably confident and played with a swagger commensurate with this player’s talent. This is flawless violin playing – the double stops in the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s not that Bernard Haitink’s tempos are universally slow, it’s just that they often feel that way. When it works the music can be magisterial, immense, but when it doesn’t you find yourself chafing against such unyielding allegiance to restraint. Last night we saw both sides of the veteran conductor, but a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K453 like the one he conjured with Maria João Pires and the London Symphony Orchestra can banish the memory of any orchestral strife with the merest rococo flourish of its wrist.Pires is a transformative pianist – so familiar, so innately right, yet Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
As Julian Lloyd Webber combatively suggests of certain strands of 20th-century music: “Let’s make a noise no one likes. If the audience likes it, you have failed as a composer.” In general, though, the first programme in this welcome three-part series is if anything too measured and respectful in guiding us through the labyrinths of 20th-century music – from Debussy to Richard Strauss (relatively easy on the ears) via the tougher, spikier Schoenberg and Webern.Partly encouraged by the fact that Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise has become a bestseller (who knew so many people could Read more ...
joe.muggs
As a south-east Londoner and a parent, I was overjoyed recently to discover the Blackheath Conservatoire and its range of family-friendly musical activities – and sad to realise that like so many arts institutions in the current climate it is under threat of closure. It is in fact in the very final stages of a fundraising drive to refinance its debt and prevent its demise – moving steadily towards a donation target of £175,000 needed by the end of this month.Of course, The Arts Desk is happy to support other arts organisations, but what made this even more worth reporting was a chance meeting Read more ...
philip radcliffe
The “Mastersingers of Manchester”, about 350 of them, were gathered together by Sir Mark Elder to celebrate the Wagner bicentenary with this performance of Act Three of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in its entirety. He also pulled in about 200 orchestral musicians, exploiting the city’s resources just about to the limit.Sir Mark even broke into song himself in the build-up to the main event. With the help of his assistant conductor Jamie Phillips and soloists and young musicians, some only 12 years old, from the Hallé Youth Orchestra and Chetham’s School of Music, Elder set the scene with Read more ...
David Nice
Is Prokofiev’s 1938 score for Alexander Nevsky the greatest film music ever written? Not quite, if only for the fact that Sergei Eisenstein’s second sound-picture glorifying historical role models for the ever more tsar-like Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, is darker and more richly textured, and the music’s greater breadth reflects that.Yet you can’t fault Prokofiev’s spirited response to every war situation in this propagandist masterpiece about the stalwart 13th century prince who sees off an invasion of Teutonic knights in a battle on a frozen lake. It was made at a time when the German threat Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’une faune, La Mer, Images Anima Eterna Brugge/Jos van Immerseel (Outhere)Is it worth going to the trouble of tackling Debussy’s orchestral music on period instruments? Jos van Immerseel’s versatile band have already given us historically informed Ravel and Poulenc, and this Debussy anthology has delicious moments. These pieces are already miracles of orchestral refinement. Here, the textures are noticeably clearer and we get to wallow in the sounds made by antique woodwinds and narrow-bore piston horns. Oboes and bassoons come off best – plangent, reedy Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
It may look like a sure-fire hit to let Kansas mezzo Joyce DiDonato rip through the drama-queen repertoire of the Baroque. But last night’s exploration of the dustiest, most overgrown byways of 17th and 18th century Italian opera needed every drop of DiDonato’s star musical talents – not to mention those of her backing band Il Complesso Barocco – to convince us of the worth of these rarities. The audience bought it. I remain on the fence.Prepared in conjunction with that great scholar of this period, Alan Curtis, the concert didn’t disappoint in certain key respects. In mood, narrative flow Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
“Improvisation? That?” whispered a Japanese lady to her friend at the end of the afternoon concert. She was making a good point. Half the performers in this programmed jam were glued to their scores. It was the low point of a mixed day at the Barbican Centre that began with a very enticing premise of offering to immerse us in the “Sounds from Japan”. We barely dipped our toe. The problem wasn’t simply the variability of the music; it was also the laziness of the curatorial thinking.The same five o’clock concert that offered up the bizarre improvisation began with a similarly odd introduction Read more ...
philip radcliffe
I’ve seen some double acts in my time, such as the Oistrakhs and the Torteliers, but none quite like that of Storgårds and Hardenberger. Best friends, they took it in turns to conduct the BBC Philharmonic and to take over the soloist's spot. First one mounted the rostrum, while the other gave us a UK premiere as soloist. Then they switched roles, producing a second UK premiere.John Storgårds, the BBC Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor as well as being Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic back home, is also a virtuoso violinist, his first calling. Håkan Hardenberger we know as Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Cage 100 Various artists (Wergo)Wergo’s handsomely produced box set was assembled for last year’s John Cage centenary. Fans will lap it up, and one hopes that curious newcomers will take the plunge and open their ears to this extraordinary, approachable music. Joshua Pierce’s 1970s album of the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano still sounds definitive. Cage’s Table of Preparations is included in the booklet, listing in alarming detail the position, size and orientation of every bolt, washer and screw inserted in Pierce’s piano. Inevitably, you start to wonder if the bell- Read more ...