Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve all been there: the persistent sweet-unwrapper during a Beethoven slow movement, the mobile-phone screen glowing at the corner of your field of vision throughout King Lear, the fidgeter who seems to drop their programme every time the music subsides to pianissimo. But where do we draw the (battle) line between ambient noise and outright intrusion? And how, more importantly, should we address these concerns in the heat of the moment?On Sunday night I reviewed half a Proms concert for theartsdesk. The reason I didn’t make the second half wasn’t illness, displeasure at the performance, or Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Formed especially for the London 2012 Festival, the Aldeburgh World Orchestra does what it says on the tin: bringing together talented young musicians from across the world in a single youth orchestra. Under the direction of Mark Elder, musicians from 35 countries, including Jordan, Ukraine, Malaysia and Uzbekistan amongst others, joined together to perform a mixed programme of music from Mahler, Britten and Stravinsky, as well as the world premiere of Charlotte Bray’s At The Speed of Stillness.Owing to circumstances beyond my control I was unable to stay for the second half of the concert. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
And so we came to the Ninth. But wasn't it meant to be the only work on the programme? Why then was I hearing Boulez? A mishap: the final movement saw the quartet of soloists fall apart so comprehensively that, momentarily, it began to sound like they'd slipped into some unscheduled Modernism. We should be so lucky. No, we were still with this strangely anti-Olympian climax to the Beethoven cycle, where faster, higher, stronger had become slower, messier, more slug-like in Barenboim's hands.Did he know he was conducting Beethoven Nine, not Bruckner Nine or Mahler Nine? Twice, I did Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven for All: Symphonies 1-9 West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (Decca)The back story behind this ensemble is an inspiring one – an orchestra founded by Edward Said to enable Arabic and Israeli musicians to perform together. And Daniel Barenboim’s personality makes him almost impossible to dislike – a larger-than-life figure, as inspiring in much contemporary repertoire as he is in the Viennese classics. Released to coincide with this team’s Proms residency, Decca’s new Beethoven box set would serve as a decent souvenir of any of the concerts. But none of these are Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Can this really be only an afternoon’s travelling away from traffic-choked London? I’m waist-deep in wild blue lupins on a verdant Swiss mountain looking for a concert hall.A cow’s bell nearby is slightly frustrating - beyond the lupins, I guess, is another steep field with the track I need; a paraglider high above me is out of earshot, though they’d be able to see the hall better than I can. I’m trying to get to a masterclass by that captivating operatic soprano of the past, Ileana Cotrubas, who is here as one of the Verbier Festival’s habitual stars-of-stars helping out rising talents. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Much has been written about how old-fashioned Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven cycle feels. Yet what can seem backward-looking is in fact a perfect reflection of Barenboim's personality. Each and every symphony appears with a swagger in its step and a cigar in its mouth. Last night's instalment - taking us to the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies - was no different. We were given puffed-up performances that displayed flashes of brilliance but also, especially in the Eighth Symphony, an overall glibness.They were also carefree. Carelessly so at times. It was instructive to watch the maestro at the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve had more than our fair share of Beethoven symphonies in London recently. But with the Proms’s monolithic Daniel Barenboim cycle now midway through, memories of Riccardo Chailly and John Eliot Gardiner are being steadily blotted out. Gone are the frisky tempos, the lightness of touch, and in their place we’re being reintroduced to Beethoven the heavyweight. There’s majesty here certainly, and occasional moments of compelling originality, but also a fair amount of frustration.The first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 may be marked “Allegro non troppo”, but the composer’s in-built Read more ...
charlotte.gardner
Last night's concert performance of Berlioz's Les Troyens was not a Prom for the fainthearted. After all, if sitting through a five-hour opera had been a daunting undertaking for the Covent Garden audiences last month - who could also enjoy David McVicar's eye-catching staging - then it was inevitable that anyone seated in the Royal Albert Hall for the visually pared-down version was expecting to feel very culturally virtuous by the end of the night. With its Trojan horses, ballets and massive crowd scenes, this grand five-act opera based on the fall of Troy and establishment of Rome is both Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Last night was meant to be a celebration of Beethoven and Barenboim. But we had a gatecrasher. And at the opening concert of the first cycle of the Beethoven symphonies at the Proms for 60 years, the name on everyone's lips was neither Beethoven nor Daniel Barenboim, but that of Pierre Boulez. Though modest in its manner of musical expression, the near 50 minutes of continuous music that make up Boulez's chamber work Dérive 2 dwarfed the two Beethoven symphonies that stood either side of it and dominated the tone of evening. There was bafflement from some in the audience, wide-eyed Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach, Beethoven, Schubert Reiko Fujisawa (piano) (Quartz)Each of these three composers makes very specific, particular demands on a pianist’s technique. Playing Bach as sharply and as delicately as this doesn’t suggest that Reiko Fujisawa will be up to the mark when tackling the spongier, more amorphous world of Schubert’s Impromptus, but she’s able to inhabit both sound worlds with ease. Having a mixed programme on CD is such a rare pleasure; this is like listening to a carefully prepared live recital. The Schubert comes at the end of the disc. The major-minor shifts in the first Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Rio Ferdinand did four years' ballet training as a child, England manager Graham Taylor sent the national squad to dance classes, while the Royal Ballet once ran an active football team. Ballet and football have long been secret lovers backstage. But they have only been rarely seen out together in public.The tidy formations and rehearsed moves that please in dance theatre aren't compatible with the unpredictable spontaneity of football, and while kings of grace such as Ronaldinho, Zinedine Zidane or Dennis Bergkamp bring tears to the eyes with their individual flair, it's the overall arc of a Read more ...
geoff brown
One top student orchestra playing on its own can be exciting enough. Two playing together can produce a charge of dynamite that might not leave the building standing. That was so anyway in last night’s Prom, when players from New York City’s Juilliard School and London’s Royal Academy of Music, by now frequent collaborators, joined up to shake the earth with thunderous brass, swooning strings, diamond precision, a velvet bloom – every characteristic of a world-class orchestra except the honour of being conducted by Lorin Maazel.Instead the podium was occupied by America’s favourite composer, Read more ...