Classical music
Boyd Tonkin
Just before the doors closed again on live audiences at the Wigmore Hall, Iestyn Davies and members of the Arcangelo ensemble celebrated the private side of a very public composer. The peerless counter-tenor, whose powerfully polished command of phrase and line makes this music feel as natural and necessary as breathing, sang Handel’s nine German-language arias to pious texts by Bartold Heinrich Brockes (who also wrote the words to the “Brockes Passion”). In between clusters of songs, the Arcangelo players – violinist Matthew Truscott, lutenist Thomas Dunford and cellist Jonathan Manson, with Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Voces8 are the Rolls-Royce of British a cappella ensembles and their LIVE From London - Christmas online festival is the Rolls-Royce of online festivals. Amazingly, it is their second such festival of the year: the first, during the summer, which I regret I didn’t catch any of, featured recorded, streamed performances by leading vocal groups from this country (I Fagiolini, Stile Antico) and the US (Chanticleer). The Christmas edition that has followed soon after has mopped up some important groups missing in the summer, with expanded international element and a Young Performers Spotlight.The Read more ...
David Nice
Perhaps it’s just the conventional mind which celebrates the pathos, tragedy and triumph in Beethoven’s music at the expense of his humour. And that’s the one aspect of the composer which has been a constant revelation – to me, at any rate – in his anniversary year. Too often the laughs have been solitary, listening to CDs or watching online. On Saturday night, in the warm and friendly atmosphere of the Fidelio Orchestra Café, the pleasure could be audibly shared in two of the composer’s wittiest and most surprising piano sonatas, and amplified by the revelation of another major Beethoven Read more ...
Robert Beale
Adaptability is the name of the game for big companies in the music business now. And Opera North’s streamed presentation of Beethoven's Fidelio from inside Leeds Town Hall is a prime example of just how adaptable things need to be.The orchestra is down to 33: single (hardworking!) woodwind, two horns, two trumpets, no trombones, in a score reduction by Francis Griffin. The chorus numbers 24, and between them that’s going some for a socially distanced ensemble these days. The soloists are spread along the front of the extended platform, with space to act and interact to some degree. Lighting Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Like a hokey-cokey, we’re back to live music in London – but for how long? I overheard another audience member explaining it was her third time at Kings Place this week, as people cram in as many concerts as possible before a feared return to cultural lockdown. Kings Place has been in the London vanguard (with Wigmore Hall) of venues opening as much as possible, and Aurora Orchestra have responded with imagination, transforming their Mozart concerto cycle to a festival of chamber music.The format was the same as the Imogen Cooper concert I reviewed in October: starry soloist, Mozart concerto Read more ...
David Nice
For the performers and the venue there can be nothing but praise. To be back in Kings Place’s Hall One after so long was to realise afresh that no other London venue gives such air to soaring strings – and these ones truly did soar and gleam. For the programme, not quite so much. When you begin in the heights – as the first of the evening’s concerts, the one I was lucky enough to attend, did – with Ravel’s Duo for violin and cello, two bouts of romantic rodomontade can quickly pall, however committed the performances.A confession: I signed up for “Kanneh-Masons and friends” without looking at Read more ...
Robert Beale
The second of the Hallé’s Winter Season concerts-on-film is scarcely less ground-breaking than the first. But this time we are in the orchestra’s second home, the former church now extended to be Hallé St Peter’s in the regenerated part of Manchester's city centre. The same skilful use of camera techniques to show a socially distanced ensemble, with Sir Mark Elder as conductor and, this time, Roderick Williams as vocal soloist, makes satisfying visuals to go with arresting sound. Despite limited resources in the installed lighting, there’s still effective use of washes of colour in the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Stravinsky: Petrushka, Rossini/Respighi: La Boutique Fantastique Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko (Onyx)Stravinsky’s Petrushka is usually played in the 1947 revision, so it’s a pleasure to hear the 1911 original. The musical material is identical, though the later version’s sharp glitter is less apparent; this Petrushka looks back as much as it looks forward. Vasily Petrenko’s Liverpool recording is a triumph; it’s sharply played, neatly characterised and full of life. Think thick oil paint rather than neat line drawing. There’s a wealth of detail that emerges as Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Although this streamed concert from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra featured the music of Schubert and Tchaikovsky, the ghost at the feast was Mozart, the acknowledged inspiration behind the two main pieces. In particular these works sought to capture the charm and ease of Mozart but cast in the later composers’ idioms.As with the SCO concert I reviewed a fortnight ago this was broadcast on YouTube, the presentation simple and unobtrusive – no son et lumiere to get in the way of the music. And the repertoire was chosen to show the advantages of a small orchestra: lithe textures, fast tempos Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The key of C minor threw a dark shadow over music long before it became the tonality for Beethoven to express the struggle of one against many in the Fifth Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto. Mozart was a feted teenager and Beethoven a babe in arms when Haydn wrote his C minor Piano Sonata in 1771, 60 years before Schumann began to make his own inner turmoil into music in the wake of Beethoven. Yet through silence as much as sound, Paul Lewis made something personal and almost confessional from the Sonata’s slow introduction, placing the full tonal weight of the Wigmore’s Steinway at the Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Artists’ management Harrison Parrott has started a concert streaming platform called Virtual Circle on emusiclive.com, launched two days ago and only available as a live event - no catch-ups. Watching its debut concert - the Oslo Philharmonic with the much-buzzed-about Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä - it struck me that it must be terribly difficult to film an orchestra effectively. Ah no, responded a friend in the know: it’s actually easy, but you have to go with how the music feels, not what it is doing. I wish someone had told the camera directors of this otherwise admirable Read more ...
David Nice
A good idea on paper – commission composers of all ages who happen to be women to write music for one, two or three instruments with the fundamental theme of swiftness and brevity, food element an optional extra – turns out to work brilliantly on screen, even if it was originally destined for a live lunchtime festival event. Take 11 personable women – nine composers, including Spitalfields Festival curator and presenter Errollyn Wallen, viola-player and producer of the film Rita Porfiris and pianist Siwan Rhys – one man, very funny when necessary, violinist Anton Miller, blend skilfully Read more ...