Classical music
David Nice
Anna Clyne’s engaging First Person here led me to two of her works in a Philharmonia rainbow. She curated a woodwind-based gem of a 6pm programme of works by four women composers, herself included, and her Clarinet Concerto could only gain from two other live wires, soloist Martin Fröst and conductor Pekka Kuusisto, the first time I've encountered the violinist in that role. Ultimately it was his way with two masterpieces by Tchaikovsky and Bernstein that stole the show.The main Philharmonia programme looked odd in prospect. There was no connection at all between the concerto, Weathered, and Read more ...
First Person: Donatella Flick on why the conducting competition in her name is needed more than ever
Donatella Flick
What are the qualities that make a great conductor? It’s something that has been debated for years, brought into focus recently not least because of Cate Blanchett’s award-winning performance as fictional maestra Lydia Tár. Despite what you may think of the film, it has reignited debate about what it means to be a conductor today, and what qualities they should possess. For me, of course technique, gesture, and communication with the orchestra are obviously all vital – but what is needed in the end is magic, that something extra that makes you sit up in your seat and hang on to every Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Shimmeringly urbane, shifting effortlessly from intricate agility to muscular intensity, the music of the 18th century composer Joseph Bologne is remarkable not least in the fact that it has remained an obscure part of the repertoire for so long. This hybrid theatre concert, created by Bill Barclay, former director of music at Shakespeare’s Globe, is part of a growing swell of initiatives to recognise the dynamism of a composer who has been overlooked because he was black.The thrilling LPO performance – which took place last night at St Martin-in-the-Fields and premiered in Snape Maltings at Read more ...
Anna Clyne
Collaboration fuels a lot of my music – I love the interaction that takes me outside of my natural tendencies – it’s a source of inspiration and an opportunity to see my own music and creative process through a different lens.This past season I had the joy of collaborating with exceptional musicians as I’ve expanded my catalogue of concertos. These have included Glasslands for saxophonist Jess Gillam, Time and Tides for violinist Pekka Kuusisto, ATLAS for pianist Jeremy Denk, and Weathered for clarinetist Martin Fröst – the latter of which is a co-commission between the Concertgebouw Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Two women featured prominently in this programme; the one a composer and the other a conductor.To the composer first. Long before she hit New York big time, Anna Clyne was at Edinburgh University, so there’s a strong link with Scotland that the Scottish orchestras aren’t afraid to exploit. Her 2015 piece This Midnight Hour might have been inspired by two delicate poems, but its mood and tone have the sweep of a film score, and a dashed exciting one at that.The opening is a turbulent eruption from the cellos and basses, leading into jagged shards of music that seem to flicker in the light like Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
On paper, the formula shouldn’t be that special. Really good music played by really good people is hardly a groundbreaking concept; but in actuality it’s seldom found with such honesty and diversity as in Pekka Kuusisto’s recent residency with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The first two of the triptych of concerts were with Americana/Folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Amidon, and began with a set centred around Janáček’s First String Quartet "The Kreutzer Sonata". The quartet takes its name from a novella by Leo Tolstoy whose protagonist is an abusive and jealous husband Read more ...
theartsdesk
Sent by a surely reluctant BBC PR, an ardent choral singer and supporter of new music, last Tuesday’s email had a title to make one groan: “New Strategy for Classical Music Prioritises Quality, Agility and Impact”. Very W1A. But this was no laughing matter – ker-pow-ing out of the thicket of corporatespeak were two devastating punches to the solar plexus.The first, under “Future-Proofing BBC Ensembles”, told us that “a voluntary redundancy programme will open across salaried posts in the English Orchestras (BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra), aiming Read more ...
David Nice
This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not interested in Mahler. Two of the orchestra’s most distinguished visitors, Jakub Hrůša and Paavo Järvi, certainly are, so after Hrůša’s blazing Second, hopes were high for Järvi’s Third.It delivered in terms of masterful conducting, effortless in every gear change, and in all those sonorities which must have seemed outrageously novel in 1896; when the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass has something of the nature of what might have been called a “happening” at the time he wrote it. It was 1971, and it was created for and premiered at the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington.It’s set for very large forces: three choruses, two orchestras including a rock band and a blues band, a virtuosic baritone soloist (the “Celebrant”) around whom the whole drama of the piece is built, and at least 20 other soloists from a group designated “Street Musicians”.So it’s a happening that doesn’t happen very often – at least so far as 100 per cent professional Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It would seem unfitting to report on Nonclassical’s event – happening? – in the Barbican Conservatory on Sunday with anything resembling a conventional review. So instead I shall treat this free-form “experience” to a non-sequential response, in the form of 19 observations: things I saw, heard or noticed.1. Carola Bauckholt’s Doppelbelichtung required Linda Jankowska to produce a range of unlikely sounds from her violin, viz.: creaks, squeaks, whistles, swirls, swoops, wails, whines and rasps. They hung in the air, being broadcast in loops via speakers hidden in suspended violins. 2. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eleanor Alberga: Wild Blue Yonder (Navona Records)This is a belated review for an album that came out in 2021, but one well worth a retrospective appraisal. Eleanor Alberga (b.1949) is a British-Jamaican composer, perhaps best known for her 1998 setting of Roald Dahl’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She has also had a successful career as a pianist as well as composer, and is an important figure in the British musical landscape. The opening and closing tracks are duets for violin and piano, featuring the composer as performer alongside her husband, Thomas Bowes. The opener Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
This evening brought to mind those marathon 19th century concerts when Beethoven would unleash a handful of new symphonies and a couple of piano concertos on an unsuspecting public.The programme in Edinburgh's Usher Hall began at 6pm with a smorgasbord of delightful show pieces by the pupils of St Mary’s Music School, celebrating its 50th anniversary, and continued with a full programme from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, effortlessly squeezing in two diminutive saxophone concertos before the interval and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition after – the latter embellished by a real Read more ...