Classical music
Ian Julier
Returning to his Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for the first time since the crisis began in his home country, Kirill Karabits’ arrival on stage was greeted by the entire Lighthouse audience rising to their feet with loud applause and cheers of support.Given how much the world has changed he’d considered changing the programme to include some Ukranian music, but quickly came to the conclusion that there was little point. During his past thirteen years with the orchestra his series “Voices from the East” has regularly featured so many works from his homeland that he felt both the BSO and local Read more ...
graham.rickson
Leroy Anderson: Complete Orchestral Works BBC Concert Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin (Naxos)There’s a lot more to Leroy Anderson than the ubiquitous Sleigh Ride. Though his teachers at Harvard included Enescu and Walter Piston, the polyglot Anderson had intended to pursue a career in languages until the Boston Pops Orchestra’s conductor Arthur Fiedler heard his “Harvard Sketches” in 1936 and commissioned him to write some short pieces. Harvard Sketches is one of many surprises contained in this five-disc set, a brief section depicting a library reading room full of Ivesian effects, the five- Read more ...
David Nice
One of the world’s top five orchestras – sorry, but I locate them all in continental Europe – played on the second night of its London visit to a half-empty Barbican Hall. Half-full, rather, attentive and ecstatic. As for the much-criticised venue, which I’ve always been able to live with, playing as fine as this shows that you don’t need a state-of-the-art auditorium to make the most beautiful sounds.Under the masterly hands of Semyon Bychkov, there were depths and perspectives in defiance of the acoustics. They were there right at the start in the noblest possible performance of the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner famously wrote. “It’s not even past.” Funny to think that I approached 2022 bored in advance with all the glib celebrations of post-WWI international modernist breakthroughs that the centenary of Ulysses and co. heralded. Yet here we are, the year only a couple of months old, standing eagerly for a national anthem in a packed concert hall. It comes in the middle of a programme that delivers not just a fervent, but a nearly ecstatic, celebration of European cultural identities in all their Romantic passion and singularity. The anthem, of course, Read more ...
David Nice
National sensitivities are running understandably high right now in the thick of an ever-escalating aggression. What a shame that the Southbank Centre has excluded Russian artists from performing alongside British and Ukrainian performers to bring a message of peace through the arts in their upcoming fundraiser. Not so "Dance for Ukraine" at the London Coliseum, including Natalia Osipova in its line-up.Other cases of discrimination are emerging. In Switzerland the Ittingen Charterhouse has just cancelled a cello-and-piano recital, claiming that "the reason is the Russian nationality of the Read more ...
Ian Julier
Who could have imagined the table-turning controversy that might have cast doubt on the inclusion of works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky when planning this programme?Before raising the baton, Holly Mathieson expressed the hope that Russian music written before the current crisis would survive to be performed after it. Vociferous applause from the audience and bravo to the Association of British Orchestra and its members for their announcement of a measured approach and refusal to cancel Russian music. Let’s hope other arts institutions follow their cue. Completed in 1940 and bearing Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Mark Wigglesworth is a semi-regular guest with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and he’s hugely experienced in the opera world, which might explain why my expectations were so high for his Wagner in this concert. In the event, though, I didn’t love his take on Tristan’s Prelude and Liebestod.The sound from the orchestra was right, with tortured lower strings and clean, clear winds, but entries often sounded a little too “approximate”, and the overall sound only occasionally gelled. Admittedly, that’s a risk baked into performing this piece with its tortuous world of unfulfillable longing Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Had he never written a note of his own, George Walker would still have left a record of trailblazing achievements. Born in Washington DC in 1922, he studied piano at Oberlin College and the Curtis Institute (the conservatoire that notoriously rejected Nina Simone). He was taught by Rudolf Serkin and, in 1945, debuted as a soloist first at the New York Town Hall and then, playing Rachmaninov’s third concerto, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.Needless to say, neither Town Hall nor Philadelphians had ever seen an African American soloist before. By 1946, however, Walker had Read more ...
Robert Beale
It’s catching on … for the second consecutive night I heard an orchestra begin by playing, to a standing audience, the Ukrainian national anthem. The previous night it was Opera North’s musicians: this time the Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund addressed the audience at the Bridgewater Hall to explain that it would be dedicated to the victims of war in Ukraine, and the Hallé gave it a resounding reading, followed by loud applause.The outstanding performance of the evening came from a Swede, cellist Jakob Koranyi, in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, wisely positioned as the opening event. With Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mahler on modern instruments is ubiquitous these days, so historically informed performance is bound to be revealing. Here, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment brought transparency and focus to Mahler’s often complex textures in his Fourth Symphony. The concert was programmed as a showcase for young South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, whose voice is ideal for this repertoire. But just as interesting was conductor Ádám Fischer, an engaged and energetic Mahlerian, and always gently resistant to convention.The concert opened with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth. The gut Read more ...
Robert Beale
There was something extraordinarily powerful and moving about Saturday’s Beethoven commemoration concert by the BBC Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Omer Meir Wellber.Originally planned for 2020 but of course postponed, its second part consisted of a UK premiere: a work co-commissioned by the BBC to be the opening of something quite novel. Wellber told the audience it would be like “a symphonic poem by Beethoven”. He meant that Ella Milch-Sheriff’s The Eternal Stranger would be followed without any break by both the Funeral March from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony and then (again with no Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The main course of this Wigmore lunchtime concert was Brahms but I was lured in by the dessert: a rare chance in this country to hear the music of the French composer Guillaume Connesson. Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski and his international group also treated us to a newish piece by another Macedonian, Pande Shahov, in a nicely-proportioned programme that started with high seriousness and ended with a fluffy-light soufflé.Sadly I was unable to be there in person, but caught the stream on the Wigmore’s website – their streaming of concerts that began during Covid seems to have become a Read more ...