Classical music
David Nice
Gustav Mahler died, according to his wife Alma’s memoirs, at midnight on 18 May, 1911. Anyone mystically inclined to connect noughts and "o"s – you see it crossed my mind – might find some spooky link between 00:00 (pedantically, the time of death was 23:05) and the fact that, for this centenary concert, indisposed conductor OramO (Sakari) was belatedly replaced by OnO (Kazushi). What transpired was delight – near-delirium, in fact – that a supreme master had total control of the composer’s Second (Resurrection) Symphony: a theatrical celebration of life and death rather than a transcendental Read more ...
Ismene Brown
There must be at least 100 more interesting pianists in the concert world than Lang Lang, but perhaps he is just the best publicist around, because nothing else can explain why such a vacuous display as he gave last night at the Royal Festival Hall could bring a standing ovation. Most of the evening felt like being on a plushly cushioned chintz sofa with Tinkerbell, listening to Bach, Schubert and Chopin being served as a cream tea. Lang Lang Inspires is the slogan at the Southbank Centre all this week, but what is inspiring? His art - or just his vast skills as a public communicator, with 40 Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
In a week in which the nation has debated the relevance of classical music, it was left to the LSO’s Eclectica concert series to have the final word. Incorporating world and electronic music alongside traditional chamber works and contemporary programmes, Eclectica’s concerts offer dressed-down, laid-back forays down the roads less travelled of the classical repertoire. With one of the 20th century’s musical greats as a grandfather and a growing reputation for his work as a producer, DJ and composer, incorporating classical music into a club idiom and setting, who better than Gabriel Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Cambridge University, cradle of Newton, Keynes and Wittgenstein, of Wordsworth, Turing and Tennyson, has produced 15 prime ministers and more Nobel Prize-winners than most nations. In its 200-year history, the university’s debating society has hosted princes, politicians and leaders in every field: the Dalai Lama, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and last week a 25-year-old east-London DJ, Kissy Sell Out. But lest pacemakers should stutter or tweed be set atremble at the presence of mixing decks and a speaker in baseball cap and wife-beater, the Union also invited Stephen Fry along – Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week we review Bellérophon, a rare Baroque opera from Lully which was exhumed by Christophe Rousset and performed for the first time last year, Debussy recorded live from the Barbican, and we answer the key question: how much is too much Percy Grainger? Would, for example, 19 discs be considered sufficient?Debussy: La mer, Jeux, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev (LSO Live)
If you don’t know Debussy’s 1913 tennis-inspired ballet Jeux, then start here. Performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with choreography by Nijinsky in May 1913, it flopped, and had Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In case anybody had the bizarre notion that the Classical Brits was getting a trifle too classical, the 2011 version of the event was rebranded as the Classic Brit Awards. That would seem to open the door to almost anything - classic rock perhaps, or classic schmaltz (well, waltzmeister Andre Rieu did win Album of the Year). The night climaxed with Dame Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger", capping a tribute to the late John Barry, and sounding nowhere near as "classic" as she used to.Stage musicals comfortably make the cut, with Alfie Boe and the cast of Les Misérables taking the stage Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Private music patrons aim to raise £2 million to fund 400 scholarships for London children with a talent for music. The aim is to give steady four-year support for disadvantaged children to have Saturday lessons, individual coaching and group tuition to learn a musical instrument. Alongside the scholarships, there is to be a "partnership" scheme whereby professional musicians go into schools to work on music with up to 10,000 schoolchildren.The 400 scholarships and the partnership scheme will be funded by a new music charity, The Mayor of London’s Fund for Young Musicians, set a fundraising Read more ...
stephen.walsh
It’s a neat-sounding idea for a concert: a sequence of works composed in the year the previous composer died. Neat, but not necessarily revealing. This one started with Elgar’s Cockaigne, composed – symbolically, I assume – in 1900, and ended with Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, completed in 1934, the year of Elgar’s death. In between came Britten’s Nocturne, written in VW’s last year, 1958. With a little more time, they might have added Birtwistle’s Melancolia (1976, Britten), and left everyone completely bemused.
What did it all show? That the Brits have different ways of not being up Read more ...
peter.quinn
Sometimes you can leave a concert feeling slightly shortchanged: a perceived weakness in the programming; an unprepared, lacklustre conductor; a phoned-in performance. No danger of any of the above at the marathon session three of Reverberations, a weekend of concerts at LSO St Luke's and the Barbican devoted to the music and influence of the contemporary US composer Steve Reich. Actually, by the end of the evening, some people may have been ruing just how many artists have fallen under Reich's influence. We filed into the Barbican at 6pm on Saturday. We left the hall at 12.15am on Sunday Read more ...
David Nice
Its advertised centre of gravity, a concerto specially commissioned from affable whiz-kid Nico Muhly, turned out weightless, and not in a good way. Yet the programming of the Aurora Orchestra's latest adventure showed us why the Arts Council were right to fund this young and dynamic constellation. OK, so I'd have been happiest with a whole evening of Hindemith Kammermusik rather than one movement. But for the new generation of pick-and-mix onliners, the seven eclectic works on the bill couldn't have been more enticing, thanks to the iron fist of velvet-glove live stream presenter-conductor Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week we’ve offbeat violin and viola duets played by a renowned husband-and-wife duo, Scarlatti keyboard sonatas played on piano, and a very Italian take on Shakespeare from one of the 20th century’s fieriest conductors.Victor de Sabata: The Merchant of Venice Orquesta Filarmónica de Malága, Coro de Malága/Aldo Ceccato (La Bottega Discantica)
Italian conductor Victor de Sabata (1892-1967) is best remembered today for recording a classic account of Tosca with Maria Callas in 1953. He was also a composer and collaborated with the German director Max Reinhardt on a spectacular production Read more ...
David Nice
In a London Philharmonic season playing safer than before, principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski has earned the right to a few meat-and-two-veg programmes. Even in a concert containing more than a handful of your hundred best tunes, Wagnerian carrots and Straussian greens were presented pleasingly al dente, with a prelude to this crack team's longest ever impending Glyndebourne journey and the most secure of all living dramatic sopranos soaring assuredly. And Jurowski always serves up prime cuts of Tchaikovsky freshly, without rich sauce. After a discombobulating Pathétique Symphony a couple Read more ...