Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
The roar with which Leonidas Kavakos and Emanuel Ax dispatched Beethoven’s mighty Op. 30 C minor Violin Sonata – flinging off the writhing semiquaver coils of the Finale with desperate vigour – was enough to remind anyone in the Wigmore Hall last night of the serious talent of this Greek violinist. It was not however quite enough to banish the memory of the evening’s whimpering start – the ragged gesture in the general direction of the Violin Sonata in A Op. 12 No. 2 – with which we opened.From the flurry of competition wins that launched his career, Kavakos has built a mature performing Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: Agrippina Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi)Handel’s early opera appears in a new edition from René Jacobs, in a version which aims to reconstruct Handel’s original intentions. Agrippina was premiered in Venice in 1710 and was a huge hit, bolstering Handel’s operatic confidence which blossomed after he pitched up in London two years later. Jacobs’s edition is trimmed – several arias in the third act are gone – but you don’t feel you’re missing much. As with this conductor’s superb Magic Flute, there’s a thrilling sense of theatre, helped by the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The London Philharmonic’s current festival – Prokofiev: Man of the People? – is all about the question mark. While the festival’s concerts, lectures and even its classical club-night each make their own statement, the overarching spirit here is one of exploration, of questioning. Jurowski and his orchestra are peeling back the composer’s grinning modernist mask and attempting to expose the human face (or possibly faces) behind it. It’s a provocative process, and one that calls Prokofiev’s lesser-known works to testify against the evidence of such popular, high-gloss favourites as Romeo and Read more ...
geoff brown
How do you solve a problem like Prokofiev? Not with a TV talent hunt promoted by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not even, I’m beginning to think, with the current London Philharmonic concert series, Prokofiev: Man of the People?, devised by Vladimir Jurowski. Prokofiev’s uneven output; his parade of masks, making it hard to decipher what the composer is thinking and feeling: these form the principal difficulties, especially when the popular works are put to one side in the programmes and the gargoyles and dead dogs march in. We had a couple of those in last Wednesday’s London Philharmonic concert Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra Howard Shelley (pianist and conductor), Orchestra of Opera North (Chandos)Lavish Beethoven box sets continue to appear. I’ve enjoyed Chailly’s symphony cycle, and another good one with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna PO has just dropped into the intray. Symphonic overload has been thwarted by this comprehensive collection of Beethoven’s music for piano and orchestra. Howard Shelley directs as well as plays, but there’s no slackness in terms of orchestral response. Shelley previously recorded matchless accounts of the Grieg and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Last Tuesday night saw the London Symphony Orchestra celebrating 20th century English music under the baton of Antonio Pappano, launching proceedings with a stylish (and more than a little sexy) rendition of the dance suite from Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face. Last night the LSO were back with Adès himself for an evening offering a rather more expansive tour through the composer’s work, pairing its dense orchestral textures with a selection of songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn.We opened however with music from young Spanish composer Francisco Coll, Adès’s only composition student. Coll’ Read more ...
graham.rickson
Liszt: Piano Concertos 1 and 2; Grieg: Piano Concerto Stephen Hough, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Litton (Hyperion)Liszt’s two piano concertos, particularly the subtler Second, aren’t played enough. They’re compact, dramatic, witty and cleverly structured, and it’s hard to listen to performances like these without grinning. Liszt can move from high-class schmaltz to cheesy melodrama in a flash; from the most poised romantic reverie to music which sounds as if it’s accompanying someone about to jump off a cliff. And what Stephen Hough excels at is the quick transformation, the mercurial Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Wigmore Hall staged its own Entente Cordiale last night with an operatic double bill bridging both sides of the Channel. Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company looked beyond predictable partners for Purcell’s inconveniently short Dido and Aeneas, lighting on Charpentier’s Actéon, another miniature tragédie en musique. With rather more emphasis on the musique and rather less on the tragédie, the work may not be quite the equal of Purcell’s concise emotional epic, but as an evening’s musical dialogue this was harmonious indeed.Near contemporaries, Charpentier and Purcell have both Read more ...
Ismene Brown
London's Barbican Centre is 30 this year, and with a special Olympics subsidy boost as the world's eyes turn to the British capital this summer, it aims to be as lovely inside as it is famously unlovely outside. Film beauties Cate Blanchett and Juliette Binoche appear live on stage and theatre giants Pina Bausch, Philip Glass and Shakespeare are celebrated in a season of prominent internationalism. Peter Sellars, Toni Morrison, Yukio Ninagawa, Krzysztof Penderecki and Chick Corea are among many other world names invited to EC2 over the season. Three key British theatre companies are Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Keyboard Concertos Alexandre Tharaud/Les Violons du Roy/Labadie (Virgin)Another disc of Bach keyboard concertos on a major label, following Ramin Bahrami’s brilliant, zingy set with Chailly on Decca. Alexandre Tharaud is teamed here with Les Violons du Roy, a Québécois chamber orchestra who use modern stringed instruments played with copies of period bows. Theirs is a distinctive sound, more astringent and incisive than that made by Chailly’s Gewandhaus players. So much so that Tharaud’s use of a piano instead of harpsichord could feel anachronistic. But he and director Bernard Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The Wye valley is famous for its scenery and coach parties: Symonds Yat, Tintern Abbey, Goodrich Castle, salmon fishing, leaves in autumn etc. etc. But in mid-winter all that is dead. Instead, this month as for the past dozen or so Januaries, the woods and waters will echo to the sound of chamber music, played by some of the most brilliant young musicians in the country.The Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival was started by pianist Daniel Tong (pictured below right) and violinist Fiona McNaught as a kind of winter camp for a handful of young professional musicians, who took over St Briavel’s Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We laughed. We cried. We cursed. We gulped. Not at fiction. But at fact. At the real world. The year's best theatre? Murdoch vs Watson. Thriller? The hunt for Osama. Horror? The Japan tsunami. Finest comedy? The Beeb's year long genuflection. Best opera/installation? The funeral of Kim Jong-Il. This was the year that reality trounced art.News channels thrived as their bulletins played out these teeth-janglers. Some were short explosive little numbers; others seemed determined to become five acters. Narratives were complex, characters unforgettable, visuals motley. The world mostly huddled Read more ...