Classical music
alexandra.coghlan
Not a lot of swooning goes on at the Wigmore Hall. Nor does it seem the kind of institution to endorse rapturous wailing, beating of the breast, or the throwing of either flowers or underwear. All of which leaves one with the problem of how to respond appropriately to a concert such as last night’s by Richard Egarr and countertenor Iestyn Davies. Decorous applause doesn’t quite seem to cut it when faced with such a joyous abundance of talent, and I’d have endured any amount of plague and/or restrictive corsetry for an authentic 18th-century atmosphere in which to experience this ecstatic Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Once upon a time, composers ran Hollywood. As conductor John Wilson reminded us last night, 44-time Oscar nominee and movie composer Alfred Newman became so powerful as second in command at MGM that he had two security guards posted at his office door. Any directors attempting to enquire how the score to their movies was getting along were told to clear off. Big, bold orchestral scores were Hollywood's crown jewels. At the Barbican last night we got a rare chance to inspect them close up. And how they dazzled us.Erich Korngold was up first, the father of Hollywood composition. Wilson, a suave Read more ...
graham.rickson
A glance at the programme hinted at the identity of the orchestra: you don’t perform Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite and Janáček’s Sinfonietta in the same evening unless you’ve industrial quantities of brass and percussion to spare. This was riveting, transcendent stuff, and the most uplifting evening I’ve spent in a concert hall for years. Plus, the echoing barn of Leeds Town Hall is the ideal size for a 170-piece orchestra, a perfect place to experience Janáček’s hocketing brass fanfares. This was the closing concert of the NYO’s winter tour, and an incredible achievement for an Read more ...
David Nice
Which he filled, as it turned out, with mature aplomb - no tricks, no wild extremes, but plenty of colour, space and that rare knack of finding the right tempo at any point which is the instinctive gift of the born Mozart interpreter. The programme was a mixture of top and (by Mozart's standard) second-drawer works. The earliest, fifth of those perfectly decent violin concertos which loom perhaps too large in the orchestral repertoire, needs an authoritative Mercury among soloists to keep us riveted. Aurora leader Thomas Gould was perhaps a bit too sweet and nice for that. Was it my Read more ...
David Nice
...your true love might do worse than bung over a brace of concertos. Which is what BBC Radio 3 is doing on "piano day" as it nears the halfway mark of its 12-day Mozart marathon. Is it a good idea? Does any composer, even Bach, stand up to the complete treatment, hour after hour?Well, the main point is that people are talking about it, which has always been Radio 3 supremo Roger Wright's brief in previous projects (the Beethoven experience included popular downloads of the symphonies that broke all records, so to speak). More than a little Mozart is, of course, good for the health, as Read more ...
David Nice
Vienna has its New Year's Day concert, conducted this year with some style but not quite enough sensuousness by Franz Welser-Möst. London could do worse for a more modest equivalent than let the Wooden O play host to a well-spiced small package of carols, seasonal songs and readings from Chaucer's times to Thomas Hardy's. But sing and play it lustily, ye Gabrieli ladies and gentlemen, or not at all. And it's sad to report that the proceedings got off to a start as soggy as the winter's afternoon they were supposed to keep at bay.Were those well-muffled chorenes at sixes and sevens really the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Earlier this month, George Osborne, Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were spotted in a Royal Opera House box surveying the country's most expensive artistic patrimony. What they thought - and how they and the Arts Council might wield their axe - will change the musical landscape of Britain forever. So here to point them in the right direction, theartsdesk's merry band of regulars - Edward Seckerson, David Nice, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson, Stephen Walsh and Ismene Brown - separate the wheat from the chaff in this round-up of the best and worst concerts, opera, musical Read more ...
theartsdesk
Yesterday was yesterday. Today there's the rest of the week. What are the options? You could go to the shops and exchange all your presents, or you could pursue something more in the cultural line. To which end, theartsdesk is delighted to propose some suggestions. Our writers strongly recommend that you do one or more of the following while opportunity knocks. ENGLAND LondonVisit a Georgian medicine cabinet. London is full of treasures which fail to register on the public radar. One such gem is The Symons Collection at the Royal College of Physicians in Regent's Park. The display Read more ...
David Nice
Ninety-five per cent of Napoleon's army was wiped out on the freezing retreat from Moscow in 1812. The statistics weren't nearly as impressive nor, thankfully, so mortal for the Russian National Orchestra's concert in Paris's Salle Pleyel last Saturday. It happened under reduced circumstances that hardly affected the quality of the playing - though sadly nothing could be done about the wayward conducting of the controversial (though not, it seems, in France) Mikhail Pletnev.That afternoon, a blizzard affected Paris with snowflakes the size of which I've never seen. Several of the lorries Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
An awful lot of bad singing goes on in the name of Christmas. If it’s not the endless piped renditions of Slade and Cliff Richard, then it’s anaemic carol singers in every railway station and foyer. Each street corner becomes a concert hall (albeit one with exceptionally poor acoustics) and every passer-by an unwitting (not to say unwilling) audience member. Music becomes a commercial mood-board, a festive ear-worm to prompt charitable giving and personal spending in equal measure. How joyous then to escape the icy pavements and ambient noise for a few hours and celebrate Christmas with the Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Everywhere I looked I saw children, some burying their heads in their mothers' chests, some doodling on programme notes. One was dancing to Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony. Ambitious. Last night's BBC Symphony Orchestra concert had been given over to family listening. My first thought was why? Stravinsky's fun but dry Dumbarton Oaks is hardly suitable. And Prokofiev's Sixth is psychologically X-rated when done right. Sandwiched between these two works, however, was, superficially, a perfect stocking filler: a new Oboe Concerto from accessible Spectralist Marc-André Dalbavie that sees the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Perhaps it was the effect of the elaborately mosaicked and marbled stage of the Wigmore Hall, but when a black-clad Thomas Zehetmair stepped out last night to occupy this space with just his violin and Bach for company, the image was incongruous. Even devotees of the hall will surely acknowledge the fussiness of its aesthetic appeal, the lingering visual excesses of a bygone age making it as unlikely a setting for Zehetmair’s deconstructed style as for the sharp architectural edges of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Yet host them it did, and in a characteristically uncompromising Read more ...