Classical music
Rachel Halliburton
It began with the tolling of a lone bell and ended in a transcendent blaze of golden light. The UK premiere of James MacMillan’s Fiat Lux – first performed in Los Angeles in 2023 to mark the dedication of the dazzling crystalline Christ Cathedral, formerly a televangelist backdrop, as a Catholic church – was as exhilarating as it was meditative, an iridescent exploration of spirituality and sound.James MacMillan – who during the concert was awarded with an Ivors Academy Fellowship to mark his status as one of our most successful living composers – conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra himself Read more ...
Peter Whelan
There's something undeniable about the way music can weave itself into the fabric of our lives, shaping our passions and leaving an indelible mark on our journeys. For me, this magic has been particularly intertwined with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra. My first encounter with them, back in 1992, wasn't live in a concert hall, but rather through the flickering screen of a television.A Proms performance of Handel's monumental oratorio Israel in Egypt had captivated me so completely that I, a wide-eyed teenager, felt compelled to record it onto a VHS tape. I watched it on repeat, immersing Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Most concert promoters will tell you that contemporary music tends to be, to put it politely, a tricky sell, which is one of the reasons why it’s most often programmed alongside Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. A whole programme of the stuff tends to be box office suicide, so it’s almost never done.It’s a testament to something or other, then, that not only was (almost) everything in this Scottish Chamber Orchestra programme written in the last 50 years, but that they got a remarkably good audience for it; certainly nothing smaller than another regular season concert. What’s their secret?Some of it Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bloch: Schelomo, Bruch: Kol Nidrei, Dohnányi: Konzertstück Tim Posner (cello), Berner Symphonieorchester/Katharina Müllner (Claves)You know that some releases will be good within just seconds of pressing play. Here, the seductive, rich tone of Katharina Müllner’s Berner Symphonieorchester draws you in like a magnet, the string harmonics heard two minutes into Bloch’s Schelemo hitting you like a sharp poke in the ribs. And cellist Tim Posner sits so comfortably in the mix, sound engineer Johannes Kammann deserving a shout out – this is one of those rare recordings that sounds fabulous at Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Like Hamlet or Fidelio, Schubert’s Winterreise can withstand and overcome (almost) any kind of re-imagining. In the case of Hans Zender’s 1993 “composed interpretation” of the work for chamber orchestra – and sundry sound effects – the new model has itself become a near-canonical classic. Allan Clayton first brought his large, lustrous but vulnerable and involving tenor to the re-orchestrated song cycle in 2015. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, Jane Mitchell’s production (with Clayton billed as co-director) confirmed that Zender’s music, and the panoply of stage effects that Read more ...
David Nice
“Spring Awakenings” promised as the theme of this year’s London Handel Festival began with a big if messy vernal bouquet of “Alleluia"s and “God Save the King”s. Esther, Handel's first London oratorio, seemed like an appropriately jubilant way to celebrate Laurence Cummings' 25th and final year as festival director.That meant cramming more than 60 musicians in to the east end of the not exactly commodious St George’s Hanover Square, and some curious balances for many of us in the packed church. I got an earful of the four oboes, with attendant squeaks from time to time, and their pulsing Read more ...
Laurence Cummings
At the time of writing, rehearsals are well under way for the London Handel Festival 2024. It’s a big year for me as it’s my 25th and final year as Musical Director.Though preparations are keeping me very busy, I have found the odd quiet moment to reflect on the last 25 years. In fact it was 31 years ago that Denys Darlow first asked me to play in the LHF. He was organist of St George’s Hanover Square, and he loved to perform and record Bach Cantatas for BBC Radio 3, until one day a member of the public came up to him and said “You’ve got a bit of a cheek, performing Bach’s music in Handel’s Read more ...
Ed Vulliamy
Towards the end of his book Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann deploys a cogent expression: “chasing history, before it disappears”.Last time the Nash Ensemble devoted a weekend here to music from the Terezín concentration camp, in 2010, there were discussion panels with survivors of that strangest, eeriest of narratives from the Shoah. Zdenka Fantlová (pictured below, then living in Bayswater Road, having survived the camp, Auschwitz and Belsen) described the performance of music and plays when doomed to die as “dancing under the gallows”.With hindsight, that is: no one, she says, knew Read more ...
Robert Beale
Just a few days after the Hallé’s Bruckner 8, the BBC Philharmonic weighed in with his Seventh Symphony for its Manchester audience. We’re all getting a lot of Bruckner in his 200th anniversary year, and this was a wise choice, being one of his shorter creations in the genre – only about an hour and 10 minutes in playing time – and containing some of his best melodic ideas and rhythmic inventions.It also benefits from the tonal qualities of an orchestra at the top of its game to realise the richness of the textures he created, and this was amply fulfilled in the sound of the Philharmonic, Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Continuing the relationship with choreographer Örjan Andersson – who choreographed their landmark project Goldberg Variations – Scottish Ensemble gave the first of their latest movement-inspired performance, Impulse: Music in Motion in Glasgow on Friday evening.Their programme comprised Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, with these chamber works sandwiching an unannounced and stunningly articulated solo, Alia Fantasia by Nicola Matteis, played by Artistic Director Jonathan Morton. Everything was performed from memory, which frees the players up in a very Read more ...
Simon Thompson
While it is an incontrovertibly good thing that the classical music world has set about rediscovering the work of neglected female composers, not all rediscoveries are equally worthy of being found. Particularly on a day like International Women’s Day (IWD), concert programmers run the risk of unearthing work that tends towards the mediocre, and which can end up being tokenistic.Not on this IWD concert, however. I’d never heard of Mel Bonis (pictured below) until this Royal Scottish National Orchestra concert, but her Trois femmes de légende proved a delight. She studied with Franck in Paris Read more ...
David Nice
Chances are few enough to catch Polish composer Szymanowski’s densely brilliant 1920s score for a ballet about love in the Tatra mountains. Harnasie (Robbers) is so little known that we need a clear line through action and sung text. That all went out of the window in the projections of renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Ben Cullen Williams. It was the final nail in the coffin of an evening where excellent work from Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was sabotaged at every turn.The beautiful bodies of three dancers from Company Wayne McGregor made a good Read more ...