Classical music
Richard Bratby
Bent Sørensen has christened his new harpsichord concerto Sei Anime: “six souls”. The six concise movements, written for Mahan Esfahani and a chamber-sized orchestra, are modelled, apparently, on the dance movements of a Bach keyboard suite. But as Sørensen explained from the stage – standing next to Esfahani’s gleaming black harpsichord – two further anecdotes explain the name. It’s borrowed from a range of French womenswear, seen in a Copenhagen shop: the audience laughed.But it’s also derived from a mis-spelling on the manuscript of JS Bach’s six partitas and sonatas for unaccompanied Read more ...
David Nice
London’s musical life began its halting road to recovery when in July 2020 a great cellist, Steven Isserlis, stepped out with obvious delight to play Bach to a live audience at the Fidelio Café. Another, Leonard Elschenbroich, joined by the full-on spirit of delight that is Alexei Grynyuk, hit more than one high note last night, proving that this special space will never lose its magic.Part of the charm and the privilege, of course, is to hear the resonance of strings and piano at such electrifyingly close quarters; a nod here, though it was more of a private event, to the stunning sound made Read more ...
David Nice
"Contemporary classical", for want of a better term, works best in concert as a cornucopia of shortish new works offering a healthy range of styles and voices. Add to the mix six of the most exhilarating and original chamber concertos ever, by no means casting complementary premieres in the shade, put together some of the UK’s best musicians and make it an afternoon marathon taking place in the round aatn extraordinary venue, and success should be total.And it was, on Saturday from noon to 5.30pm, in the exquisite surroundings of Malling Abbey The idea isn't unprecedented: the Swedish Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
More than half a century has passed since John Eliot Gardiner’s choir and orchestras first won their historically-informed licence to thrill. A feverish Saturday night at St Martin-in-the-Fields proved that Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists can still quicken the pulse and rinse the ears of the most jaded concert-goer. In James Gibbs’s elegant temple, a programme of top-drawer Haydn and Mozart symphonies interspersed with a brace of Mozart violin concertos might sound like a recipe for low-key polish and politesse. In the event, Gardiner – who turned 79 last week – and his band Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Xian Zhang is clearly a versatile conductor. In this concert, with the London Symphony Orchestra, she presented a fascinating strings work by Chinese composer Qigang Chen and a new trombone concerto by Dani Howard, all framed with favourites from Ravel and Stravinsky. Zhang is from China herself, and mostly works in the US, but she will be known to UK audiences from her time as principal guest conductor of the BBC NOW, and for occasional appearances with English and Welsh National Operas.A keen ear for detail was apparent from everything that Zhang conducted in this diverse programme. She has Read more ...
Robert Beale
The baton passed, metaphorically, to the Hallé last night in the Vaughan Williams symphony cycle shared between them and the BBC Philharmonic to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary. Literally, that baton was in the same hand as on the last date, for it was John Wilson who conducted the Ninth Symphony, as he had the second and seventh 12 days ago. This time VW was paired with Holst, as the second part of the concert consisted of The Planets.It made an interesting comparison, as the two composers were friends as young men, and though Holst died 24 years before Vaughan Williams and The Planets Read more ...
Michael Price
There are lots of ways that we respond to great works of art – intellectually and emotionally, then visually, aurally and even by taste and smell, depending on the art in question. I have a habit of screwing my eyes tight shut and bringing to mind a piece of favourite music, or book, or person, and it seems a glowing imprint forms behind your eyelids. You could try it now!I’ve been fascinated with Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto since I was at school, mostly because I was a trumpet player, and Bach’s super-high trumpet part was regarded as the Mount Everest of brass playing – a peak I Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
I expected the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s Usher Hall concert to be jam-packed with a joyful melee of admiring friends and relatives. This is a vast orchestra of over 100, and it wouldn’t take that many aunts and uncles to fill the Usher’s cavernous spaces, but in the event the audience for this inspiring and diverse programme was disappointingly thin. I was told it was a tough sell, being Good Friday, the beginning of a holiday weekend, and with Covid restrictions still in place in Scotland for another 72 hours or so. Better, by all accounts, in Glasgow the following night.The Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Having not heard a Passion live for several years I decided to do two in close succession, to compare pieces from different ends of the musical spectrum.Bach’s 1724 setting, a masterpiece of the baroque, dramatises the story through emotional engagement and expressive characterisation. Arvo Pärt’s Passio (completed 1982) is by contrast severe and minimalist, its declamation deliberately flat and detached, until a blazing climax, one of the hardest earned releases in all music.I borrowed the CD of Passio from my local library as a teenager, when the Hilliard Ensemble’s premiere recording first Read more ...
graham.rickson
JS Bach: Magnificat, CPE Bach: Magnificat Gaechinger Cantorey/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus Music)Coupling this pair of Magnificat settings on a single CD makes so much sense. JS Bach’s 1723 Magnificat is wonderfully served here, Hans-Christoph Rademann’s Gaechinger Cantorey turning in a performance which marries lyricism with rhythmic zest. Rademann’s 19-voice choir make a thrilling sound at full pelt (listen to them in the “Fecit potentiam”) and there’s some exquisite orchestral playing from recorders and natural trumpets. Solo voices, drawn from the chorus, are exceptionally good Read more ...
Ian Julier
The last of this season’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert series Voices from the East featured music from Azerbaijan with Kirill Karabits focusing on works by the contemporary composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and her teacher Kara Karayev.Born in Baku in 1918, Karayev spent hard times in Moscow in 1942-46 as a student of Shostakovich before returning to his homeland to become one of its most distinguished composers. Although he died in 1982, he remains renowned there and in the countries of the former Soviet Union for opera, ballet and symphonic works as well as ensemble, instrumental and Read more ...
Robert Beale
At first sight, Vaughan Williams’ Second and Seventh Symphonies might seem to have a lot in common. Both are quite programmatic and pictorial, the second (the London) including music that might have finished up as a tone poem, and the seventh (Sinfonia antartica) adapted from his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948).But it seemed that John Wilson, conducting the first of two contributions to the Hallé/BBC Philharmonic celebration of Vaughan Williams (the second is with the Hallé on 21st April) found more real symphonic qualities in the earlier work than the later one.Rightly so, Read more ...