Classical music
igor.toronyilalic
Stately females sailed the corridors like grand multicoloured liners. Grown men in boaters and Union Jack waistcoats raced balloons to the Royal Albert Hall ceiling. Beachballs. Streamers. Flags. Fancy dress. One St George's Cross read "Votes for Women!" My first thoughts were: how lovely, in a way, that the mentally ill are allowed a day out like this.It does strange things to you, does the Last Night. Most amazingly strange was what it did to Lang Lang. His performance of Liszt's First Piano Concerto lacked all the customary vulgarity. Technical precision was from the start giving Read more ...
Ismene Brown
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Actor Toby Jones, singer-songwriter Mara Carlyle, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and ballerina Bridgett Zehr discussed the challenge of turning work into performance and the moment of offering their artistry to the audience - their goals and inspirations, their best (and worst) performances, and their attitude to critics like us. We filmed the talk live, and below you can watch the event again as it happened, or you can read the Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week there's another new Mahler symphony recording, along with some disquieting British piano music and an enjoyable disc of originals and transcriptions played by a young Baltic accordionist.Frank Bridge – Piano Music Vol 3 Mark Bebbington (Somm)The bolder, more challenging pieces are the stand-outs in Mark Bebbington’s handsomely played and produced Frank Bridge recital – yet they’re sometimes curiously reticent to lodge in the memory. Bridge, still best remembered as the young Britten’s most influential teacher, possessed an acute sense of economy and scale – few of the miniatures on Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
After filing for bankruptcy earlier this year, the Philadelphia Orchestra seemed poised to be the flagship cultural casualty of the financial crisis. Five months on and the bills continue to rise, but in the best Titanic tradition the band are determinedly playing on. It’s been five years since we last heard them at the Proms and their return last night under Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit saw a capacity crowd turn out to show their support and to hear the glossy music-making for which this orchestra is so justly celebrated.For a partnership so synonymous with French repertoire, the Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk, or theartsdesk.com, is a website created in 2009 by leading British professional arts journalists and critics to offset the decline in supply of arts coverage in the print media where most of them worked. Launched on 9 September 2009, it publishes daily updating reviews, interviews and features by its member writers that aim to combine the best of print journalism standards with the speed, accessibility and technical opportunities of the web.Its particular strengths are overnight reviews of live plays, concerts and dance, in-depth Q&As with leading arts figures, weekly Read more ...
David Nice
I’ve noted before the lingering John Wilson effect on the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whereby that pioneer of Hollywood-style authenticity always leaves the strings especially who play for him in good, vibrato-drenched shape for late-Romantic music. With good reason did Bridge’s relatively early (1906-07) Isabella, based on Keats’s celebrated tale of the fair Italian and the pot of basil in which she buries her murdered lover’s head, sound like a Korngold film score of the 1930s; after all, both Korngold and Bridge took their cue from Strauss’s symphonic poems.I’m sure David Robertson played his Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Earlier this year, conductor Manfred Honeck revealed to me his love of old vinyl: the crackle, the fizz, the lost musical traditions. His performances are marinated in this obsession. The idiosyncrasies of his interpretations hark back to a time when the rules were fewer and the colours brighter. Last night was no different. His Mahler Five steered clear of the sleep-inducing modern fixations with orchestral homogeneity and tastefulness and instead jumped right off the deep end.It was bracing stuff - not from the word go (these sort of lights need a fair bit of cranking up before they begin Read more ...
David Nice
Some violinists just play; others have a voice. Ukrainian-Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman follows the distinguished line of great Petersburg violinist Leopold Auer - whose 1690 Stradivarius he currently plays - David Oistrakh and Isaac Stern, his one-time mentor. His 2008 performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, dedicated to Auer, with the great Neeme Järvi on responsive form, forged an electrifying concert partnership and augurs well for his next appearance with the London Philharmonic, this time conducted by Vassily Sinaisky, in the Korngold Concerto. The wide-ranging curiosity so Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
In a week that sees Proms visits from two major American orchestras, it fell to Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to raise the curtain for their blue-blooded “Big Five” colleagues the Philadelphia Orchestra. With Tchaikovsky featuring large in both programmes comparisons are only natural, and it will be interesting to see what response Thursday night offers to an energetic but at times rather unsubtle evening of music from Pennsylvania’s “other” orchestra.As titles go, Fantastic Appearances of a Theme of Hector Berlioz is a particularly fine one, getting bonus points for Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
While revered and respected, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis has never inspired audiences with the same affection as Bach’s B minor Mass, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, or even Mozart’s Coronation or C minor settings. Perhaps it’s the austerity, the monumentality of the work Beethoven knew to be his greatest that rejects the easy assimilation into secular concert life, perhaps it’s more simply the lack of big tunes to wash down all that liturgy. Furtwängler famously drew back from the work’s sacred challenges as he grew older, but Sir Colin Davis is evidently determined to keep tackling a work whose Read more ...
Ismene Brown
On 9 September theartsdesk, Britain's first professional arts journalism site, will be two years old. To celebrate we’re holding a live debate with four leading performers during the Kings Place Festival. An actor, a singer, a dancer and an instrumentalist will share their different experiences of performance. Join us, live or online, for a stellar event.Toby Jones actor | Mara Carlyle singer | Mahan Esfahani harpsichordistBridgett Zehr ballerinaLeading performers in different art forms join us for a live debate and lunchtime reception in the Kings Place Festival.Actor Toby Jones, acclaimed Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It may have taken her until 2005 to get her Wigmore Hall debut, until 2006 to break onto the stage of the Royal Opera House, but at 53 Susan Bullock has finally arrived, claiming the crown of soloist for this year’s Last Night of the Proms, a firm foothold at Covent Garden and her rightful place as Britain’s finest dramatic soprano. For a singer who “started singing by mistake”, whose musical training began in a council house in Cheshire on a piano rescued from the local rubbish dump, it’s no small achievement.Chance and luck have played their role in the careers of many performing artists ( Read more ...