Classical music
Simon Thompson
And we’re off! This concert marked the beginning not just of the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival but, perhaps more importantly, of Nicola Benedetti’s tenure in charge as the EIF’s Director. She came onstage for a chat before a note of music was played. Part of her mission as director appears to be to make the arts more accessible, and if her introductory chat wasn’t much more than a gentle hello then it still did the job. Any aim to demystify classical music has to be welcomed.That brief seems to have been passed on to violinist Stefan Jackiw, the artist around whom this programme Read more ...
David Nice
Programming works from the same decade – in this case the 1940s – can reveal fascinating contrasts: what an impressive gulf, for instance, between two masterpieces by Hindemith and Strauss in this first half, and what sensitivity to very different styles from the NYOGB under Carlos Miguel Prieto. Be careful what you choose as the big symphony, though. I’d always had my doubts about Copland’s Third, and though it couldn’t have been more compellingly lit and shaped, it paled by comparison.Let’s get the elephant in the Royal Albert Hall room out first, for in every other respect, encores rich in Read more ...
David Nice
Circumstances matter here. The annual visit to what remains my favourite music festival in the world was going to be kyboshed by the date fixed for a big hospital operation. But the Pärnu Music Festival worked overtime to get me rebooked to the first slice of the 10 days, while my Macmillan nurse fixed up five crucial meetings and tests on the two days before my new departure date. I went, came back the evening before the 12-hour op and still can’t believe it all happened.That also shifted my usual expectations: I like to go for the big chamber concert featuring the world-class musicians of Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Yuja Wang and Klaus Mäkelä, two of the classical world’s biggest hitters, have recently united to make that even more powerful item, the “power couple”. But much as they are both photogenic and charismatic, their reputations are also based on musical excellence, as was on display at last night’s sizzling Prom.But far from wallowing in romantic excess, they gave a reading of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini that was refreshingly no-nonsense in its approach, nimble, mercurial and the opposite of self-indulgent.Wang’s playing had momentum from its very opening, which never sat back Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It is a complicated business running a summer school for 170 people in the British countryside. Not only laying on a stimulating programme of musical events, providing pastoral care for the under-18s and interval drinks for the over-18s, but more basic needs. As I arrived and was greeted by Voces8 Foundation CEO Paul Smith he was grappling with the news that a tree had come down on a nearby power line and there was likely to be no power to the site for 5 hours. This was a challenge both for the provision of lunch but also for the supply of electricity to the church so the organ could be used Read more ...
graham.rickson
Otto Klemperer: The Warner Classics Remastered Edition (Warner Classics)The young Otto Klemperer’s conducting career was encouraged by no less than Gustav Mahler, Klemperer’s meteoric rise leading him to become director of Berlin’s Kroll Opera from 1927 to 1931. The first two CDs in this set comprise recordings made during his tenure there; dim mono sound aside, these fiery readings of Wagner, Brahms and Strauss defy their age. The following decades saw the conductor faced with exile in Los Angeles and range of physical and personal catastrophes, including brief imprisonment. Do listen Read more ...
graham.rickson
May 2021 should have seen the appearance on Netflix of a new restoration of Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoleon, lasting nearly seven hours and timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death. The release was delayed, but, in anticipation, theartsdesk spoke to the composer and conductor Carl Davis, who has died aged 86. Davis’s soundtrack for the groundbreaking 1980 screening of the film, assembled by historian Kevin Brownlow, brought him international acclaim, though his career scoring silent films had started several years earlier.GRAHAM RICKSON: I became aware of your name Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It stunned me to discover that last night was only the sixth time Carmina Burana had been heard at the Proms. It seems tailor-made for the festival: large-scale and bombastic in a way that fits the proportions of the Albert Hall, familiar to occasional concert-goers but with much more to it than the "famous bit". And in this performance the CBSO and an array of choirs went at it with gusto, raising the audience to its feet at the end. Carmina Burana may be an utterly manipulative piece – knowing the buttons to press and pressing them shamelessly – but it is a pleasure sometimes to be Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Perhaps music and politics should always stay at a decent arm’s length; in the modern world, they seldom can. The Hallé’s annual visit to the Proms presented an all-Russian bill and closed with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony: his much-disputed “Soviet artist’s response to just criticism” and a classic instance of the collision between art and power as, in 1937, the composer struggled to survive Stalin’s potentially fatal disapproval.Before the interval, the opening work’s cast-list reminded us that current geopolitical tensions also surface in the concert hall. Rachmaninov’s choral symphony Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
One of the undoubted highlights of Prom 14 was unprogrammed – following his commanding performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto, Jan Lisiecki returned to the stage to give an encore of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, Opus 9 No 2.There was a rapt silence as he played this intimate work to the packed hall, perfectly balancing the golden singing tones of the upper notes with the ebb and flow of emotion driven by the rising chords in the bass. It was a moment that seemed to show where this remarkable pianist – who made his professional debut aged nine – feels spiritually at home; no surprise Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The Three Choirs is (are?) off again, for the 295th time, but with a very different look, even from the festivals of my youth, never mind 1715, or whenever the first one was held (there seems to be some doubt about it). The big oratorio concerts in the cathedral are still there, but these days with a pulsating retinue of smaller concerts and recitals in a variety of other venues, not all of them in Gloucester, this year’s host city. Even oratorio life has a somewhat skewed appearance. Vaughan Williams’s Sancta Civitas is labelled “oratorio” but lasts a mere half-hour or so, while his Read more ...
graham.rickson
Louise Farrenc: Symphonies 1-3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is not perhaps the best-known name among pre-20th century women composers garnering increased attention recent years – but she might be the best. She managed to achieve success in her own lifetime, even in the field of the symphony – the form most guarded by the high-art (male) gatekeepers – before pretty much disappearing from music history. This release of Farrenc’s three symphonies (plus two overtures) by the Insula Orchestra, playing on period instruments, makes a very persuasive Read more ...