Classical music
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata’s performance with Jess Gillam at Chetham’s School of Music was filmed in private on 9 January (and the sound was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 19th), but to see it in its full visual glory we had to wait until a one-off streaming on Friday. No harm in that: good things are worth the wait, and it was all well filmed (credit to Apple and Biscuit Recordings) and very well presented by Linton Stephens. His interviews with the Camerata’s new leader Caroline Pether and principal cello Hannah Roberts, and later with Jess Gillam and Pekka Kuusisto, were intelligently presented Read more ...
Nigel Hess
It has been well-documented over the last few months that there has been an upsurge in listener numbers for many radio stations offering classical music – notably BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and Scala Radio – and, during these unprecedented times it comes as no surprise to discover that so many people (of all ages) are finding solace in music which, in some cases, they are turning to for the first time.For me there’s a family resonance – my great-aunt, Dame Myra Hess, set up a series of lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery during World War Two for war-weary Londoners and she seemed to know Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The clever programming of the “Unwrapped” series has been transformational for the reputation of Kings Place. Ever since the Bach series in 2013 these year-long sequences of concerts and other events have succeeded in silencing the crustier commentators, and in putting the London arts venue properly on the map. This 13th series, “London Unwrapped”, got under way last night under restrictions, but it was so well done: the best of possible starts, it bodes well for a series that will go right through to New Year’s Eve.It wasn’t just the thinking behind the concert programme which was so smart Read more ...
graham.rickson
The Way of Light – The Music of Nigel Hess (Orchid Classics)You’ve probably heard Nigel Hess’s music without realising it. He’s scored multiple RSC productions and has provided incidental music for dozens of films and television programmes. Here we’ve a selection of what Hess calls his ‘stand-alone music’, in energetic, lively performances. Hess’s tonal language is fluent and readily accessible. There’s more than a hint of Malcolm Arnold in A Celebration Overture, composed for the 175th anniversary of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. It’s anachronistic but fun; you can imagine it Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Returning to the Wigmore Hall for another socially distanced concert, Edinburgh-born guitarist Sean Shibe brought a programme of moving, often melancholy music, apt for these still locked-down times. He opened with a trio of works by John Dowland written originally for lute. "Preludium" was delightfully intimate, Shibe expertly teasing out the subtleties of its emotion, while the descending chromaticism of "Forlorn Hope Fancy" was played with an almost jazzy sense; here Shibe toyed with the rhythm as he exposed the music’s crunchy discords. "Fantasia" began with a simply played melody which Read more ...
Robert Beale
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most performances just now, was in an empty hall, with its slightly strange "empty" acoustic affecting the spoken word as the artists introduced their music.Talking to an audience is very much the style of Manchester Collective, though, and artistic director Rakhi Singh does it with natural ease even when she can’t see who she’s talking to. She and the other Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Why, in Lieder singing above all, should an outpouring of deep feeling so frighten critics? Alice Coote’s unabashed emotionalism as a recitalist can sometimes bring out the worst in the stiff-upper-lip brigade, as reactions to her high-impact Winterreise (last given at the Wigmore prior to the current lockdown) revealed. At least with Tchaikovsky’s song output, no one can plausibly claim that they really ought to be delivered with strait-laced placidity. Yet what struck me about this ambitious programme of his songs, interspersed with Russian poems spoken by Ralph Fiennes, was Coote’s ability Read more ...
David Nice
In verses from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) set by Mahler as a song, later adapted for the scherzo of his Second Symphony, St Anthony of Padua sermonizes on repentance to the fish, who all listen politely and then carry on behaving as they did before. It’s a parable destined to apply to the human world after lockdown, but not to the wonderful Iván Fischer, who turned 70 in January, telling an aquarium what to make of four movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony before and between conducting his Budapest Festival Orchestra. The results will surely charge up Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Aside from the happy accident of longevity, something that set Bach and Handel and Telemann apart from their contemporaries was fluency. I’m speaking here of musical rather than verbal tongues: the least polyglot of them was Bach, with his command of four languages, German, Latin, French and Italian, in decreasing degrees of facility. While Handel criss-crossed Europe, Bach and Telemann anchored themselves in small areas of central and northern Germany respectively.Yet the world came to them. Bach especially composed in French and Italian with mother-tongue fluency, albeit a strong German Read more ...
graham.rickson
Anna Clyne: Mythologies BBC Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, André de Ridder (Avie Records)The musical content is impressive enough, but this disc is almost an unofficial tribute to the BBC as a supporter of new music. These are pin-sharp performances of works which require a virtuoso response, the BBC Symphony under four different conductors playing as if their lives were at stake. The five Anna Clyne works collected here were written between 2012 and 2014, neatly sequenced in an order that makes musical sense. 2013’s Masquerade, written as an opener for the Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Seated at the harpsichord, Maxim Emelyanychev introduces this concert in charmingly fractured English. “Hello from Queen’s Hall in Edimbourg, today with chamber group of musicians from Scottish Chamber Orchestra…” But he falters, the camera cuts away, and there follows a mumbled digression on whether the first piece is actually by Hasse, or maybe Richter. Poised with their instruments, the assembled string quintet looks puzzled, and then the music begins, and it’s clear that whatever skill Emelyanychev (pictured below) may lack as an orator is more than outweighed by his skill as a Read more ...
Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi
Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi is an international award-winning violinist who has toured with early music ensembles like the European Union Baroque Orchestra, Dunedin Consort and The English Concert, as well as performing across Europe as a soloist and chamber musician. She is also Artistic Director of the Spirit of Music Festival that brings music right into her east Hampshire community.Everything in my life as a musician and private person was facilitated by the mutual agreements within the EU. My studies in the UK as a German citizen were funded by reciprocal EU study regulations. Within Read more ...