Classical music
graham.rickson
Mozart, Hummel and Vanhal – Bassoon Concertos Sophie Dervaux (bassoon/conductor), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg (Berlin Classics)The performance of the Hummel Grand Concerto for bassoon from 1805 here is just superb. French-born Sophie Dervaux (née Dartigalongue, just like the armagnac) is principal bassoon in the Vienna Philharmonic, and she has said of the instrument she plays: “What makes the bassoon special for me is this flexibility, this warmth in the sound.” Her previous CD for Berlin Classics included some classics of the French song repertoire (try the gorgeous “À Chloris” Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Mancunian tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams – a symphonic cycle shared by the BBC Philharmonic and Hallé – reached its conclusion with the Eighth Symphony last night. But, unlike most concerts in the RVW150 sequence, in this one (the final performance in the Hallé Thursday concerts series of 2021-22), Sir Mark Elder added an eclectic mix of other composers’ work to the evening. Value for money, without a doubt (main picture: Sir Mark Elder with the Hallé).First up was Stravinsky. The Concerto for piano and wind instruments is a challenge to the ensemble as much as its soloist, and there Read more ...
David Nice
When in 2018 Andris Nelsons and his "new" Leipzig orchestra sealed an auspicious partnership with a locally significant but modestly scaled symphony, Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” (No. 3), they could not have foreseen two years ahead when the bigger orchestral works would stay under wraps. Nelsons’ “Richard Strauss project”, shared between Leipzig and his other orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, makes sumptuous amends.Sadly, the Boston diptych due to follow this one in London has been cancelled, and the second of the Leipzig concerts (★★★) – I missed the first owing to Europe Day duty/ Read more ...
Ian Julier
Although the composer singled out as the flagship promotional hook for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s concert was the “Brilliant Mendelssohn”, the programme also highlighted Mozart, Schubert and Britten to complete a quartet of musical child prodigies.Nurtured in Vienna via choral, orchestral and operatic work as well as studying the violin, the Austrian-Spanish conductor Teresa Riveiro Böhm has recently been Leverhulme Conducting Fellow in partnership at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with the BBC Scottish SO, as well as working towards a Specialised Master’s Degree in conducting Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The programme for this concert had Andrew Manze’s fingerprints all over it. Of all the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s semi-regular guest conductors, he’s the one who most consistently delivers on the highest level. A thinker to his fingertips, he constructs programmes as intelligently as he plays them.So what a wonderful idea to begin with music by Grace Williams and end with music by her teacher, Ralph Vaughan Williams. I wasn't familiar with Grace Williams’ music before this concert, but even if you didn’t know the connection you could hear some of RVW’s influence in the way she uses a string Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Following on from the success of last year’s Symphonic Sessions, musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra returned to popular street food venue Hockley Social Club for their first joint event of 2022. With a bigger band than before - and a changing line-up - the musicians performed a range of mostly modern chamber works led by CBSO violinist Collette Overdijk.Opening with a work for string quartet, John Adams’s Toot Nipple, the four string players produced an energetic, robust sound. Pausing halfway through the piece, Birmingham poet laureate Casey Baily gave an interlude with Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Amid the warm familiarity of a programme of established Vaughan Williams favourites, presented at the Barbican by the RPO and the City of London Choir, what really drew me in was the chance to hear his Fantasia on the “Old 104th” Psalm Tune, performed at the Proms in 1950 and apparently not heard again in London since.The piece, seemingly modelled on Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, pits choir and orchestra against solo piano in a set of variations on a 17th century hymn tune. Unfortunately it turns out there is a good reason it hasn’t been heard for more than 70 years: it's a bit of a dud.This Read more ...
Robert Beale
In the first and sixth symphonies of Vaughan Williams, Sir Mark Elder had two of the most ambitious and rewarding of the whole canon to present in Saturday’s VW 150 concert, which consisted of those two works alone. A Sea Symphony in particular (the first) is a big work in every sense and worthy of his expertise in marshalling and inspiring large forces: performed second, it brought the evening to a marvellous end and received an enthusiastic standing ovation of the kind more usual at pop concerts than from classical fans.The Sixth Symphony, however, is music of remarkable freshness, in many Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
In my last review from Edinburgh, I remarked on the sheer size of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, with over 100 players on stage. Little did I know that two weeks later the Royal Scottish National Orchestra would swell its ranks with around 50 young students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, taking the total number of musicians to over 130. This was for a performance of Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony, a somewhat gargantuan piece at the best of times, but here rendered with almost overwhelming volume.But that was after the interval. The RSNO began the evening, the first Read more ...
Christian Forshaw
The idea of recording an album with Tenebrae has been bubbling away for a number of years. Nigel Short and I first worked together in 2007 when I asked him to direct the vocal consort for a UK tour I was doing with my own group. Since then we have worked together on a number of projects and regularly discussed the idea of a collaboration with Tenebrae.The juxtaposition of saxophone and voices has been central to my work as a composer, arranger and performer for almost 30 years. The way sound can morph from one to the other in an almost imperceptible way has fascinated musicians from all Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As Walter Huston croaked in 1938, it’s a long, long while from May to December. And Kurt Weill – who wrote his evergreen “September Song” for Huston in that year – spanned several musical epochs within not so many years as he travelled from the Weimar avant-garde to Hollywood and Broadway.At the Barbican, Simon Rattle’s all-Weill evening with the London Symphony Orchestra followed the composer’s obstacle-strewn but often triumphant journey in a programme that culminated in Weill’s “ballet chanté” The Seven Deadly Sins, with Magdalena Kožená (Lady Rattle) as the soloist. For Rattle, Weill’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov,with Chen Reiss (soprano) (Pentatone)Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler 4 is the first volume of a projected cycle from an orchestra with a surprisingly small Mahler discography. Mahler was born in what is now the Czech Republic, and the fanfares and funeral marches which fill his symphonies echo those he heard while growing up in Jihlava. The Czech Philharmonic does have recorded form in Mahler: Vaclav Neumann’s late 1970s symphony cycle on Supraphon is as idiomatic as they come, and there’s a thrilling vintage version of No. 9 Read more ...