Classical music
stephen.walsh
It’s not often one comes out of a concert of mainly new works with a spring in one’s step. A sigh of relief is rather more usual. But this concert on Thursday by the Welsh new music ensemble Uproar was an exception, partly but by no means exclusively because of the brilliant performance of John Adams’s invigorating, even appropriately uproarious Son of Chamber Symphony with which it ended.Michael Rafferty, Uproar’s founder and conductor, had keyed the programme backwards from the 17-year-old Adams piece, naming the concert after it and commissioning three new works for roughly the same 17- Read more ...
Robert Beale
Placing the UK premiere of Katherine Balch’s whisper concerto (for cello and orchestra) after Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 was probably an inspired idea from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Joshua Weilerstein.In its day, the so-called “Military” Symphony was not only striking on account of its use of novel instrumental effects – the “Turkish music” sound of triangle, cymbals and big drum for one, and clarinets (heard, military-band style, alongside oboes and flute) for another – but the clever and comical way they were brought into a context that was otherwise seemingly orthodox and almost Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
This was a muesli programme: nutty, crunchy, just sweet enough, its success lying in the balance of the various ingredients. At times, such was the explosiveness of the playing, it felt like popping candy had been added to the muesli, but in a good way. The fireworks came in the brilliant John Adams finale, but also from the young Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, whose playing blazed in the first half.Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, written for the composer himself to play and begun when he was little older than Malofeev is now, is certainly young man’s music. Malofeev responded to its Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
To judge by the post-interval empty seats near me, some of the Cadogan Hall audience had turned up last night solely to hear Nikolai Lugansky play Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. Well, the more fool them. For sure they would have enjoyed their not so-brief encounter with a truly distinguished Russian pianist – noble standard-bearer for a grand tradition – who gave a finely-polished, well-shaped rendition of this beloved old story (on the eve of Valentine’s Day, too). However, any early quitters would have missed the generous panoply of French orchestral showpieces gift-wrapped for us by Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
We began in a forest packed with dangers and delights and ended, also in the Czech lands, with an infectiously joyful country dance. In between, however, came a sombre and spellbinding exposure to the pain and grief of war.Last night at the Royal Festival Hall, Ukrainian guest conductor Oksana Lyniv led the London Philharmonic Orchestra in spirited interpretations of two life-enhancing favourites from a place somewhat to the west of her beleaguered homeland: Janáček’s orchestral suite from his opera The Cunning Little Vixen, and Dvořák’s ebulliently tuneful Symphony No. 8. Yet the piece Read more ...
graham.rickson
Paavo Berglund: The Warner Edition (Warner Classics)Jean Sibelius’s presence looms over this box like a friendly giant. Paavo Berglund (interestingly, one of the few left-handed conductors to have achieved international fame) recorded the seven symphonies three times and revisited the tone poems at various points in his career, and Warner Classics’ acquisition of the old Finlandia catalogue means that almost all of the conductor’s Sibelius is here, filling around half the box. It’s a mark of Berglund’s musical intelligence that there’s never any sense of going through the motions, of Read more ...
David Nice
Had it taken place a week later, this concert might have gone under the dubious banner of "Valentine's Day Love Classics". But not of the bitty, Raymond Gubbay variety: Vasily Petrenko was absolute master of three late romantic scores which happened to work well together, and Louise Alder – stepping in for an unwell Jennifer France – showed she could surmount a demanding rarity, and carry it off with flying, smiling, self-deprecating colours.Richard Strauss's six 1918 settings of lyrics by Clemens Brentano ask the near-impossible of a lyric soprano (it would be interesting to know how Read more ...
Ed Vulliamy
Antonio Pappano is at a hinge in his illustrious career, as the exciting transfer across London from Covent Garden to the London Symphony Orchestra proceeds, and the word "Emeritus" is added to his title as Music Director of his home-from-home in Rome. A good moment, then, for him to make a statement of commitment to the latter, with a shattering, searing account of probably the most terrifying piece of music ever written: Verdi’s incomparable Messa da Requiem.The evening was dedicated – on the 10th anniversary of this death – to Claudio Abbado’s contribution to Santa Cecilia over 26 seasons Read more ...
Robert Beale
Chief conductor John Storgårds’ first programme of 2024 in the Bridgewater Hall was notable for the visit of Christian Tetzlaff as violin soloist, but perhaps a little puzzling in the choice of Thomas Adès’ Violin Concerto as the vehicle for his talents.The concerto, sub-titled “Concentric Paths”, is a fascinating piece of orchestral composition but not the most obvious opportunity for a star soloist to engage his audience. And Bridgewater Hall attenders can hear Adès conducted by Adès in the Hallé’s series, too, now that he’s in post as artist-in-residence with them for two seasons.Maybe we Read more ...
David Nice
That it would be a vividly operatic kind of oratorio performance was never in doubt. Mendelssohn, who said he wanted to create “a real world, such as you find in every chapter of the Old Testament,” instigates high drama with Elijah’s brass-backed opening statement. Pappano then let the orchestral and vocal narrative fly like an arrow, supported to the hilt by all involved, not least four great singers with whom he’d achieved several major successes at the Royal Opera.The only real problem with the evening was the work itself. You feel Mendelssohn was made for the sweet and the sorrowful, yet Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
It’s hard to imagine that any London audience this winter will hear more thoroughly gorgeous singing – or more refined musical artistry all round – than Nardus Williams delivered at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday afternoon. This was a magical hour of early-Baroque Italian bliss.Williams, who once worked as a steward at Opera Holland Park before she starred on its stage, made her name with Mozart and Puccini. Recent recitals have seen the Worcester-born soprano shine with Handel heroines. This programme – solo, with just Elizabeth Kenny’s delicately dazzling theorbo for company – took us even Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Tempest-tossed seas seem all too apt a theme for January, so it felt fitting that the LPO decided to begin Saturday evening with Wagner’s stirringly elemental overture to The Flying Dutchman. As the programme note fascinatingly reminded us, he composed the work shortly after a turbulent voyage from Riga to London with his wife and their Newfoundland dog Minna, an early and terrifying exposure to the sea that would provide rich creative fodder.Just a few months after conducting her first Prom, German conductor Anja Bihlmaier took the helm in her debut with the LPO. Right from the horns’ stormy Read more ...