Barbican
Kimon Daltas
The first half of this concert was quite the family affair: Martinů’s Concerto for Two Pianos featuring the eternally youthful Katia and Marielle Labèque, with the latter’s husband Semyon Bychkov conducting.Any natural rapport took a while to manifest itself, though much of that should be laid at the composer’s door – the first movement of this curious piece favours constant and rather directionless motion over more traditionally concerto-like interplay. The result is a thick texture, with lots going on in the middle but the whole somehow failing to sound lush. The second Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
You really think they’d have learned by now. Any operatic vow to sacrifice the next living creature you see in return for salvation will reliably end up with the luckless suppliant faced with their lover/son/spouse. For those who haven’t already learned this handy lesson from Mozart’s Idomeneo, there’s Handel’s Jephtha. Its skeletal (and frankly rather daft) plot matters little, however. It’s the scaffolding for some of the composer’s most glorious oratorio writing, which last night was given the full (and often equally glorious) Sixteen treatment.There’s a gloss to The Sixteen’s sound that’s Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Last night’s Mozart and Haydn concert at the Barbican was billed as Magdalena Kožená with Les Violons du Roy. In practice it actually turned out to be Les Violons du Roy with Magdalena Kožená, which (barring a few die-hard fans of the Czech mezzo) was surely preferable for all concerned.Even on a good day Kožená’s voice has a thinness to it. At its best this can translate to agile coloratura, but it’s the vocal opposite of an iceberg – there’s really nothing anchoring it beneath the surface – and the minute any kind of strain or illness threatens it can quickly go adrift. Sounding ragged and Read more ...
David Nice
Now this is what I call an orchestra showing off: you unleash four of your horns on the most insanely difficult yet joyous of sinfoniettas for accompanied horn quartet, Schumann’s Konzertstück, and later let the other four light the brightest of candles on the enormous, rainbow-dyed cake of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. How they battled it out between them for who did what I can't imagine, but both groups covered themselves with glory.It’s also extremely good concert planning when horn-drenched early romantic extroversion, guided with unflagging energy and focus by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Read more ...
Mark Valencia
Although worlds away from festive mangers and mince pies, the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s pre-Christmas offering spread good cheer aplenty thanks to an absorbing programme of Austro-German repertoire that explored the outer reaches of Romanticism without ever quite leaving its orbit. The about-to-be-born Second Viennese School would circle a different sun from the one at the centre of Edward Gardner’s sumptuous programme – a lure that would soon draw in both Berg and Webern (though never Richard Strauss), but not quite yet.Gardner’s decision to present Wagner as the father of modernism was Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
She has been called “Africa’s greatest diva” but as DJ Nihal giving the award of Artist of the Year at this year’s Songlines Awards to Angélique Kidjo pointed out the word “diva” is a loaded one, and makes you think of Mariah Carey’s backstage tantrums. Not that there’s aren’t African divas – the imperious Oumou Sangare, for one, but Kidjo is more known her down-to-earth pragmatism and idealism.With the death of Miriam Makeba, Kidjo with age (she’s now 53) has become an even more important symbol of big ideals, helping numerous education projects for African girls, campaigning Read more ...
David Nice
For seasonal fare that’s also profound, few pre-Christmas weekends in London can ever have been richer than this one. Hearts battered by John Adams’ nativity oratorio El Niño last night, one hoped for more soothing medicine this afternoon in the naïve and sentimental music of Berlioz’s sacred trilogy, first performed some 145 years earlier. With similarly perfect casting of soloists, an even more remarkable chorus and a guiding hand that was both firm and tender from the versatile François-Xavier Roth, superlative standards continued – making me wonder what on earth’s the point of compiling a Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Richard II arrives in London after a highly successful Stratford run and while the glow of David Tennant’s Hamlet resides still in the memory. Surprisingly, the pleasure of the production lies not so much in dazzle as solidity. This doesn’t give a bold new reading but a robust interpretation; it is not a star vehicle (so often with the star surrounded by mediocre support) but one of the strongest company performances of Shakespeare that I’ve seen for many a year.Though Richard II can easily be seen as a stand-alone play, it’s actually the first of a tetralogy that includes the Henry IVs and Read more ...
Mark Valencia
Never review the audience. Thus goes the dictum, so there’ll be no word from me about the cacophony of coughers who conspired to ruin the concert, no complaint about the woman with a video recorder, unchallenged by Barbican staff until the end of the evening, who drove those sitting near her to distraction, and no mention of the damage done to A Ceremony of Carols by the sizeable faction who shattered its charm by clapping at random intervals – an act that may conceivably have pleased today’s advocates of applause between movements but was ruinous to Britten’s blissful structuring.No, the Read more ...
David Nice
Three cheers for good old Albert, natural laugh-out-loud heir of Verdi’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and the best possible way to mark creator Britten’s being one hundred years and one day old. Youth has its day in both those earlier masterpieces, but the lovers are subordinate to the middle-aged comic protagonists. Here they're the equals of a hero who is no scamster but a shy grocer’s boy who busts out drinking and worse to loosen the apron strings of a prim community. He may have had his funniest incarnation yet last night in young Andrew Staples' characterisation, very much at Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
For someone who has built a reputation for limpid, introspective piano playing, last night was a new adventure both for Brad Mehldau and his (mainly) supportive audience. He has covered fellow introvert Nick Drake’s songs, and he is a master of thoughtful, expressive piano. So when we hear he's doing a show that references drum ’n’ bass and 1970s funk in a duo with a drummer with synths and Fender Rhodes, a certain apprehension is in order. It could have been like all those opera singers who suddenly discover jazz and usually make a complete hash of it.In fact, the first few numbers were Read more ...
Mark Valencia
The alpha (Schubert) and omega (Mahler) of Austrian romanticism made for a musically satisfying pairing as the London Symphony Orchestra resumed normal service after its recent Gergiev-Berlioz marathon. Buoyed by the contrasting delights of a sprightly symphony and a weighty song-cycle, the spring was back in the musicians' collective step as they played as one for their principal guest conductor, Daniel Harding.Less satisfying were the evening’s vocal contributions, albeit for different reasons. The male soloist may be the junior partner in Das Lied von der Erde, but he has to sing over some Read more ...