Bartók
David Nice
Gorgeous sound, shame about the movement – or lack of it. That seems to be the problem with too many of Simon Rattle's interpretations of late romantic music. It gave us a sclerotic Wagner Tristan und Isolde Prelude last night, Karajanesque and not in a good way, loping along in gilded self-love before putting on a sudden spurt towards the climactic ecstasy. Fortunately the rest of the concert wasn't Strauss or Mahler, but not everything turned out well in a less than feral Bartók Second Piano Concerto – not for the most part the fault of fascinating soloist Denis Kozhukhin – and a fitfully Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach, Bartók, Boulez Michael Barenboim (violin) (Accentus)Michael Barenboim’s disc consists solely of pieces by composers whose names begin with B, but it’s effectively an A-Z of solo violin technique, as well as a demonstration of his winning versatility. Bach’s C major Sonata’s narrative is plotted with unerring skill, the hypnotic slow opening slowly growing in intensity before Barenboim lets off steam with an immaculate fugue. Similarly, the Largo prepares us for a bubbly, unbuttoned finale, Barenboim’s dynamic control masterly. It's not a huge jump from here to Bartók’s epic Sonata for Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was a very fine concert indeed, plus a lot more. The first half was a very carefully planned series of unveilings around the theme of Béla Bartók and Hungarian folk music, the second an overwhelming performance of his Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.The evening started with conductor Iván Fischer evoking the crucial incident in Béla Bartók’s life when, newly graduated as pianist and composer, he was mesmerised by the folk singing of Lidi Dósa, a peasant girl from Gerlice. It was that experience which led him to head off to the villages of Hungary and Transylvania with Zoltán Kodály to Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
François-Xavier Roth is a distinctive presence at the podium. He is short and immaculately attired, and first appearances could lead you to expect a civilised and uneventful evening. But the facade soon drops. His movements are brisk and erratic, as he conducts without a baton and instead shakes his outstretched hands at the players. He often leaps into the air, landing in a fierce pose directed at one of the players, before returning to his repertoire of small, indistinct gestures.Yet the results are impressively detailed and precise. Rhythmic clarity is a hallmark of his interpretations, Read more ...
David Kettle
What to pair with Bluebeard’s Castle? It’s always a dilemma for opera companies. Something lightweight, even comic, provides contrast but also risks trivialising Bartók’s dark, symbolist drama. Something equally brooding risks submerging the audience into an evening of endless gloom. For its collaboration with Glasgow-based experimental theatre company Vanishing Point, however, Scottish Opera has come up with a bold, ambitious solution: to pair Bluebeard’s Castle with a brand new piece, written expressly to complement it.The work in question is The 8th Door, created jointly by Scottish Opera’ Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Alan Gilbert chose a surprisingly low-key programme to open the New York Philharmonic’s three-day Barbican residency, Bartók’s genre-defying Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Mahler’s modest Fourth Symphony. But it proved an engaging combination, and showed off many of the orchestra’s great strengths. Gilbert himself led with a steady hand, although his tempos were often propulsive, and even if some of the Mahler felt superficial, there were many moments of magic, especially in the last two movements, welcome reminders of the orchestra’s considerable form with this music.Bartók’s Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
A new opera from Peter Eötvös is a major event. More than any other composer today, he has the ability to create sophisticated contemporary music that supports and enriches sung drama. This concert presented the UK premiere of his Senza sangue, a short, one-act work for just two singers and orchestra. It proved an ideal vehicle of the composer’s unique talents, and the work was given an excellent performance by conductor Simone Young and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.Eötvös himself is also a conductor, and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle is central to his repertoire. Senza sangue is intended as a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Bergen Philharmonic recently appointed Edward Gardner as its Chief Conductor – ENO’s loss is Bergen’s gain. He is contracted to 2021, so this is the start of a long relationship. On the strength of this concert, the London leg of a UK tour, it is an ideal match. Gardner (pictured below by Benjamin Ealovega) is a dynamic conductor, but one with an impressive ability to accommodate performing traditions. The Bergen Philharmonic recently celebrated its 250th anniversary, so it has plenty of those. The orchestra’s distinctive flavour was much in evidence here, but so too the conductor’s Read more ...
Natalie Clein
The cello is so deeply engrained in my fingers, my imagination, it’s part of my being – my life would feel amputated without it. You fall in love with the instrument, the music, and then you embark on the life-long task of trying to get closer to that beguiling musical ideal. That’s the drug, the contract you sign with the devil. Every day I think how lucky I am that I can dive into a score and work at it physically.In Cello Unwrapped, a year-long festival of the instrument at Kings Place which opens on Saturday 7 January with two performances by Alban Gerhardt, I’m performing in three Read more ...
David Nice
August 1914, September 2001, all of 2016: these are the dates Hungary's late, great writer Péter Esterházy served up for the non-linear narrative of his friend Péter Eötvös's Halleluja - Oratorium Balbulum. Its Hungarian premiere in one of the world's best concert halls, part of the astounding Müpa complex on the Danube in Budapest, was bound to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's anti-immigrant policy with the libretto's talk of borders and fences, and fear of the other.Yet Esterházy wrote the entire text six years ago and died just before Halleluja's world premiere in Salzburg this July Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Leonard Bernstein once said that his favourite piece of Stravinsky was whatever one he happened to be listening to. I have a similar feeling about Mozart piano concertos: I love them all in their turn, and last night I heard Mitsuko Uchida bring two of the greatest of them to life, as pianist and director, alongside the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.The template is clearly the successful “Beethoven Journey” in which Leif Ove Andsnes spent four years touring the Beethoven piano concertos with the MCO, culminating in three scintillating Proms in the 2015 season. Combining two concertos with a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Vladimir Jurowski began his latest season as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic with a typically bold and adventurous programme. At its core were the two Szymanowski violin concertos performed by Nicola Benedetti, and these were framed by Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite. The two concertos are stylistically distinct, the First impressionistic, the Second folk-influenced, so the pairings were apt. As ever, Jurowski delivered supple, well-crafted performances, and Benedetti shone, but the Read more ...