Bach
David Nice
Presenting the last Mozart symphonies as a three-act opera for orchestra, as Richard Tognetti and his febrile fellow Australians did on Monday, was always going to be a supreme challenge. It worked, as Boyd Tonkin reported here. Since then, the Barbican's grandiosely-named "International Associate Ensemble" has opened up the repertoire, synchronising with film (on Tuesday) and ending its mini-residency with the kind of vibrant rattlebag for which it's rightly celebrated. How it all added up remains to gel in the mind, but the bonuses were splendid: world-class Australian soprano Nicole Car Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Bach specialists like to explain that the second book of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed around 1740 and thus almost two decades after the first, draws on more of the fancy and daring “modern” music of its time than its more traditional predecessor. Yes, but there’s modern and there’s modern. I don’t think the scholars have yet argued that, among the ear-stretching range of moods and effects encompassed across these 24 pieces, comes a spooky anticipation of Seattle grunge. Listening to Angela Hewitt play the F minor prelude at the Wigmore Hall, with its plaintive Read more ...
David Nice
First it was the soft acoustic guitar playing, which on three occasions to three very different audiences won a silence so intense it was almost deafening. Then the loud electric, first heard in Anstruther's Dreel Halls as part of the 2017 East Neuk Festival; the ear-plugs we were given at the door proved unnecessary – just – but the shock of Julia Wolfe's LAD, transferred from nine bagpipes to Sean Shibe live alongside eight recorded selves, was massive.There's more than a touch of creative genius in all this, and as Graham Rickson confirmed in this week’s Classical CDs Roundup on Read more ...
David Nice
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans selling their wares in Riberac's big Friday market. The Dutch are here, too, in force, and one of the long-term settlers, big Baroque name Ton Koopman, makes his own major contribution in August along with music-loving local Robert-Nicolas Huet. Their base is the atmospheric tiny settlement of Cercles, a place that feels as much end-of-the-road in a Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
A complex Swedish product to unpack, this one. Someone in the BBC must have worked out that it could do with a detailed instruction manual to help people with the task: the programme booklet duly ran to a full 50 pages.There were two sets of components: firstly, all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, performed by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and soloists. Plus, alongside each concerto, a newly commissioned companion piece by a prominent composer. The 12 works, six by Bach plus the six new pieces, were spread over two Proms on Sunday. Time required for complete assembly of the finished Read more ...
theartsdesk
Let's be honest, this is the least interesting Proms season on paper for years, at least in terms of adventurous repertoire choices, following on the heels of the best in 2017. Yet in statistical terms it's more comprehensive and multi-media-friendly than ever, starting tonight with a free "Curtain Raiser" performance before the official First Night tomorrow - see David Kettle's choice below – and ending some 75 main Proms and 11 smaller-scale beauties later on 8 September. All are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and many televised.The conscious spotlighting of women composers, who have in fact Read more ...
David Nice
There is a tide in the best-planned festivals that comes in and out almost imperceptibly, bringing with it changes as the days move on. Put it down to the kind of perfect planning that discards any one rigid theme, and to forging long-term links with performers who don't just pop in for one concert. That in this case has been the work of East Neuk Festival mastermind Svend-Einar McEwan-Brown, who not only ensures artists of a uniquely high quality over the years, but also introduces themes and mini-residencies with impressive subtlety.In the two and a half days I was there this year, Bach, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Streya: New works for solo violin and violin with electronics Olivia De Prato (violin) (New Focus Recordings)Combining acoustic instruments with electronics is a dark art, and tantalisingly few details about the process are revealed in the sleeve notes to violinist Olivia De Prato’s recital disc. Are the electronics taped or generated live? How is De Prato experiencing them? And how are the sounds notated, if at all? We're not told. Three electro-acoustic pieces are included here. Most immediate is Missy Mazzoli’s Vespers for Violin, a deep, warm bath of sound which sets solo violin Read more ...
graham.rickson
Sei Solo: Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Alone Thomas Bowes (Navona)Have a look at violinist Thomas Bowes’ IMDB page. You’ve almost certainly heard him play on a giddying range of film soundtracks, and, given the frenetic pace of studio session life, you can understand him wanting a bit of peace, a few hours of "me" time. The results are collected here: Bach’s complete solo violin output in performances of heartfelt intelligence. These recordings grew from a Bach Pilgrimage which Bowes first made in 2013, travelling across the UK and playing the sonatas and partitas in Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
John Eliot Gardiner was 75 in April, and to celebrate, the Barbican Centre staged a weekend devoted to his favourite composer. Gardiner himself provided the backbone of the event, three concerts of cantatas with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, while most of the other events were chamber music recitals. That felt like a random combination, and no justification was given for the mix. Even the name was provisional: it was originally marketed as a "Bach Marathon", but became the "Bach Weekend" to prevent it sounding like an endurance test. Fortunately, the individual events Read more ...
stephen.walsh
If you ever find yourself in Leipzig at a weekend during school term, the Bach motet (and occasionally cantata) performances in the great cantor’s old church, the Thomaskirche, are an absolute must. But if you happened to be in that city this weekend just past, you will have been able to immerse yourself in practically a whole year’s worth of cantatas in the space of a little more than forty-eight hours. The Leipzig Bach Festival is an annual event. But it has surely never been quite like this before. The festival’s artistic director, Michael Maul, and the president and director, Read more ...
David Nice
First the good news: Cédric Tiberghien, master of tone colour, lucidity and expressive intent, playing the 24 Chopin Preludes plus the Bach C major and the C minor Nocturne in the red-gold dragons' den of the Royal Pavilion's Music Room. Then the not so good: Paul Kildea, ruffler of feathers during his brief Wigmore regency and in his sometimes speculative Britten biography, rushing and mumbling his way through excerpts from his new book, Chopin's Piano: A Journey through Romanticism.Much interesting material there, though even an experienced actor might have had difficulty making it all mesh Read more ...