Bartók
graham.rickson
Bartók: Violin Concertos 1 and 2 Isabelle Faust (violin), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding (Harmonia Mundi)Bartók‘s Violin Concerto No 2 remains a work more admired than loved; concertos by Prokofiev, Britten and Shostakovich still receive far more performances and recordings. You hope that Isabelle Faust’s new disc will change things. She and conductor Daniel Harding scythe through the concerto’s difficulties, and what emerges is a dramatic, lyrical and accessible work. Bartók’s opening folk-melody, introduced slyly after a few bars of sultry harp chords, is a wonderful Read more ...
David Nice
Visiting orchestras and conductors often complain about agents’ insistence that they programme their main national dishes. The request is partly understandable: we all want to hear the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler, the Czechs in Dvořák, the Hungarians in Bartók. On this occasion, it seemed like no bad thing to welcome back the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its febrile, masterly music director Iván Fischer in a work they’ve brought to London before, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. But it was a surprise to some of us to find that this passionate, flexible team’s interpretation had stiffened Read more ...
David Nice
Brave old world, that has so much unheard music in it. Not exactly the words of Shakespeare’s Miranda, I know, but that’s how I feel having experienced great things in the concert hall for the first time recently: Tippett’s Second Symphony from Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra last night, and earlier in the week more self-styled “musical toys” from overnight sensation as Newcomer of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine 2013 Awards Mei Yi Foo: a gallimaufry of piano miniatures by Bartók, Benjamin, Fujikura, Lachenmann and Unsuk Chin.You’ll note no inclusion there for the London Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After seven years, Aled Jones is stepping down as presenter of Radio 3's Sunday evening programme, The Choir. During his stint at the helm of the 90-minute show, the ebullient Welshman has showcased choral classics ancient and modern, hosted choirs from Africa, Denmark and Fiji, and fronted a memorable special on Richard Rodney Bennett.Since apparently no single individual could replace Jones (yet), Radio 3 has lined up six special editions of The Choir, each of them presented by a notable name from the choral music sphere. Conductor Suzi Digby (pictured below), who specialises in working Read more ...
David Nice
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that name. Or you could learn a lot in a short space of time from John Adams’s mini-residency with the LSO at the Barbican. There’s an even more essential book to read alongside it, the composer’s Hallelujah Junction, following an insider’s path to finding his own voice after encounters with the rigours of the 12-tone system, Cage-style anything-goes Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók, Eötvös, Ligeti – Violin Concertos Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern/Peter Eötvös (Naïve)An embarrassment of riches here - it’s hard to know where to start. The opening of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No 2, soft harp arpeggios underneath a pungent, folk-tinged melody, is gorgeous. With luck it will ensnare the open-minded casual listener before the accessibility becomes fused with this composer’s more cerebral mature style. It’s fabulous, spicy stuff – gritty in places but never losing its ability to sing. Only Bartók could make the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn and strings; Nocturne; Finzi: Dies Natalis Mark Padmore, Britten Sinfonia/Jacqueline Shave, with Stephen Bell (horn) (Harmonia Mundi)Britten’s Serenade and Nocturne are still indelibly associated with the voice of Peter Pears. His tenor, undeniably characterful, could never be described as a thing of beauty, and his 1960s recordings of both works show him sadly past his prime. Mark Padmore’s new recording is terrific - his voice is expressive, beautiful and terrifying by turns. Britten’s unique talent for word-setting deployed unnerving skill in the Read more ...
David Nice
Is it ever a good idea to programme two symphonies by one composer in a single concert? Maverick Valery Gergiev is likely to stand alone in applying the rule to Mahler. Yet curiously his Prom marathon of two big instalments made more sense as stages on a journey than yoking together the outwardly less time-consuming symphonic adventures of Sibelius. Jukka-Pekka Saraste's attempt last night to run the opposing approaches of the last two Sibelius symphonies head to head worked no better than usual.Maybe it partly felt that way because I have too fixed an idea of how much there is behind the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók: Violin Concerto No 2, Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto Valeriy Sokolov Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/David Zinman (Virgin)Bartók’s 1938 Violin Concerto No 2 seems to have garnered more respect than affection; it’s been overtaken in the 20th-century concerto popularity stakes by works by Shostakovich, Walton and Prokofiev. Which is such a shame, as it’s a glorious piece – one of those mature works where Bartók’s unique blend of folk music and Modernism find a perfect balance.Structurally it’s satisfying, its large-scale opening movement effectively reprised in dance form in the finale, Read more ...
David Nice
Highly finished literary tales of doomed nixies, like Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, seem to have prompted reams of bad art but plenty of mellifluous music. Not even all of that is on the same level. Viennese late-Romantic Zemlinsky's loose-limbed three-part Andersen homage has long floated in a limbo somewhere below the more curvaceous forms of Dvořák's Rusalka and Sibelius's The Oceanides, and not just because of unfavourable historical circumstances (the composer withdrew the work after its 1905 premiere, and it did not resurface until 1984). Still, it was good to hear it in Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Sometimes the most disturbing images exist only in our imaginations - and so the questions posed in the preface to Bartók’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle become especially pertinent: “Where did this happen - outside or within? Where is the stage - outside or within?” The answers, surely, lie “within”, making the prospect of a “semi-staged” climax to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Philharmonia Bartók series, Infernal Dance, a potentially troubling one.There was a “set” - a grey-walled shell and a pendulous shard-like mobile whose mere presence had one fearing the worst. And so the first Read more ...
ash.smyth
A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works. Throughout his career he has worked regularly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where in 2008 he created the title role in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.At his home in Sussex, Sir John talks to theartsdesk - in booming Lancashire tones - about getting into Wagner, the importance of a good beard, Read more ...