Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve all seen singers go wrong. Forgetting words, missing entries, skipping verses – it happens often enough, and is generally cause for little more than some awkward laughter and a second attempt. Never, however, have I seen a wrong entry (as ill-luck would decree, in the only sacred work of the programme) greeted with a resonant expostulation of “Oh, shit” from the performer, followed by minor audience uproar and many apologies. It wasn’t the finest moment of the evening for Juan Diego Flórez, but – loath though I am to admit it – it wasn’t the worst either.The familiar Flórez recital tics Read more ...
David Nice
No one's saying that the mezzo of the moment, glamorous Latvian Elina Garanca, isn't a very class act indeed when it comes to high-quality opera, song and even zarzuela. But she didn't revert to the Age of Aquarius too successfully in this ill-advised TV show appearance, clearly not having visited Hair when it was on in London. The only protest here might have been from the hapless spectators. And the look makes Kiri as Michael Jackson on her Blue Skies album cover seem dignified.
Below, Elina Garanca sings "Aquarius" from Hair
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So let's be fair, and see and Read more ...
David Nice
Now I know why the BBC Symphony Orchestra slunk so easily into Piazzolla tango mode last Friday: they'd danced it under Latin American instruction four years ago. It's all part of their education department's annual Diverse Orchestras week, where performers from another culture come to open the players' fantasy and the onlookers get to learn something into the bargain. And learning has never been more fun than it was last night in the Tabernacle, Notting Hill's vibrant arts centre, where the Fez Andalusian Orchestra under one of the world's great string players, Mohamed Briouel, set a zinging Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic Winter Daydreams thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak mid-winter was, by the time he penned his Second Violin Concerto, very much a one-way ticket. Two revealing performances, one remarkable young violinist.Sergey Khachatryan is wise beyond his years, a slight, wiry, pent-up young man whose small, concentrated sound is so much the product of his inner voice that it feels almost intrusive listening. He Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Mahler, Mahler and anyone who even remotely knew Mahler. There is, of course, more to the South Bank's 2011 season listings than this but the great symphonic agoniser (and his many chums) forms the bedrock of the classical programming as we all go wild for the centenary of his death this year. In contemporary music big names such as Rumer, Elaine Paige and Brian Wilson will pack them in, while newcomers like Josh T Pearson and Melissa Laveaux have first Southbank exposure. The London International Mime Festival in January leads off dance and performance, which has a child-friendly look this Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Who knew the changeover of the EU Presidency could be this much fun? Amid the formal bowing and scraping at the Royal Festival Hall bunfights last night that signalled that the Hungarians were now at the tiller of this sinking political ship were some dodgy political metaphors, a round of orchestral Where's Wally and some extraordinary music.Conductor Ivan Fischer had shuffled his Budapest Festival Orchestra as if a pack of cards and distributed them seemingly chaotically across the stage. The principal bassoon was with the first violins. First flute led the cellos. Horns, principal clarinet Read more ...
David Nice
No doubt about it, Leonidas Kavakos is one of the world's top 10 live-wire violinists. But here in London he seems to have sold himself a bit short recently with a less than great concerto repertoire (Korngold, Szymanowski's Second). Korngold furnished a springy intermezzo in last night's blockbuster recital, Szymanowski a ravishing second encore, but I went to hear two giddying masterpieces, Prokofiev's First Violin Sonata and Schubert's Fantasy in C. If unknown quantity Enrico Pace could manage to play Richter to Kavakos's David Oistrakh, it might turn out to be awe-inspiring. He did, so it Read more ...
graham.rickson
The classical-music industry loves dead icons; witness the endless reissuing and remarketing of recordings by Kathleen Ferrier and Jacqueline du Pré. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould died from a stroke at the age of 50 in 1982 and his seminal Bach discs have never been out of the catalogue since. Françis Giraud told Gould’s story on screen before in his 1993 film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, an imaginative series of vignettes depicting scenes from Gould’s life.Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont’s new film is more conventional in being chronologically ordered and composed almost entirely Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Sunday Afternoon Song Recitals are a wonderful Wigmore tradition. Filling in that tricky gap between lengthy weekend lunch and early school-night supper, they offer a chunky one-act programme, generous but without the fuss and faff of an interval. Balancing young talent with more established performers, the next few months see (among others) Emma Bell, Anna Grevelius and Isabel Bayrakdarian occupying this slot. Playing to the prevailing mood yesterday afternoon was repertoire from Gounod, Britten’s Cabaret Songs and the UK premiere of Iain Bell’s song cycle Day Turned Into Night. Sitting Read more ...
Ismene Brown
In 2011 the Barbican offers eminent theatre directors Robert LePage and Peter Brook along with the diversions of London International Mime Festival. Music includes composer focuses on Unsuk Chin, Brian Ferneyhough and Peter Eötvös, and high-profile visits by great conductors Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis and Barbican resident guest Valery Gergiev. Joan as Police Woman, the Waterboys, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Marianne Faithfull are among contemporary music performers while video and media art is featured from Ryoji Ikeda and Cory Arcangel. Full season listings below. Read more ...
David Nice
This was a programme born for marketing cliché: banish the winter blues by bathing in Latin American/Iberian warmth. And it turned out to be true, by virtue of an unexpected watershed. How did the BBC Symphony strings manage to be first among the London orchestras to slip into something truly sensual, whether tangoing with an Argentinian bandoneónist - "A what?" you may ask, and I'll tell you shortly - or dancing malagueñas with a Spanish pianist? Was it the after-effect of the John Wilson Hollywood treatment last Sunday, or just sheer joy in welcoming back the high, bright style of conductor Read more ...
charles.hazlewood
Next Friday, my amazing period-instrument orchestra, Army of Generals, begins a new residency at St George’s Bristol. The aim of this unconventional and high-octane series of concerts - which will be performed by what I refer to as my crack squad of period instrumentalists - is to raise the bar for people’s engagement with music and to bring some musical protein to a city which I think is so desperately in need of it.As someone who was born and raised in Somerset, I have for a long time been frustrated by the low provision of music in the West Country. If you drive south and west from London Read more ...