Schoenberg
Prom 5, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bancroft review - a luxury orchestral cruiseTuesday, 23 July 2024
This looked like a classic Prom in the grand old BBC tradition: two big but lesser-known pieces by pivotal figures (Schoenberg and Zemlinsky) played by a major non-metropolitan ensemble, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And so it proved, with... Read more... |
First Person: violinist Tom Greed on breaking down barriers in the presentation of chamber musicSaturday, 02 March 2024
For musicians, the period from early 2020 to mid-2021 was one of great reflection, with so many questions to puzzle over. Could we satisfy the basic need to interact with others and express ourselves? What on earth was Zoom, and how, as performers,... Read more... |
Gurrelieder, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - everything in place, but still something’s missingSunday, 25 September 2022
Schoenberg’s “Song of the Wood Dove” takes up a mere 11 of the 100 minutes of his epic Gurrelieder, though it’s a crucial narrative of how King Waldemar of Gurre’s beloved Tove was murdered by his jealous queen. Last night, as in Simon Rattle’s 2017... Read more... |
Gerhaher, Faust, Wigmore Hall review - husky shadings and dark huesWednesday, 29 September 2021
Christian Gerhaher and a string ensemble led by Isabelle Faust presented here a programme of works with a nocturnal theme. Gerhaher’s voice is an instrument of husky shadings and dark hues, so the night theme seemed wholly appropriate. The impetus... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Kemel Belevi, Schoenberg, Ondřej VrabecSaturday, 03 October 2020
Kemal Belevi: Guitar Duos Duo Tandem (Naxos)I might have responded to Kemal Belevi’s music differently had I not encountered him straight after a few hours spent with Schoenberg (see below). These pieces for two guitars don’t do anything earth... Read more... |
Moses und Aron, Komische Oper Berlin, OperaVision review – complex and powerful memorialThursday, 06 August 2020
Barrie Kosky’s production of Moses und Aron was staged at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Schoenberg’s opera is philosophical and open to a variety of interpretations. Kosky emphasises... Read more... |
Skelton, Rice, BBCSO, Gardner, Barbican review – romanticism’s last standSaturday, 14 March 2020
Only a modest audience turned up for this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, though it was unclear if this was caused by the threat of airborne disease or the inclusion of Schoenberg on the programme. The result was a paradoxical intimacy, with the... Read more... |
Ehnes, BBCSO, Ryan Wigglesworth, Barbican review - a concert of two very different halvesSaturday, 19 January 2019
The big news on this programme was Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande. This early score, completed in 1903, is a sprawling Expressionist tone poem, making explicit all the passions in Maeterlinck’s play that Debussy only implies. The story plays out... Read more... |
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – three iconic worksFriday, 30 November 2018
At first sight, performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – premiered in 1913 and sometimes seen as presaging the whole world of modernism – in the centenary year of the 1918 Armistice might seem to be lagging behind in timing (if centenaries float... Read more... |
Imogen Cooper, Wigmore Hall review – Viennese schools refreshedThursday, 28 June 2018
In the right hands, the music of the various Viennese Schools can still sound almost startlingly original. Imogen Cooper’s are very much the right hands, containing a rare, refined artistry that only continues to grow with the years. In her Wigmore... Read more... |
Prom 46 review: Gurrelieder, LSO, Rattle - gorgeous colours, halting movement in Schoenberg's monsterpieceSunday, 20 August 2017
From sunset to sunrise, across aeons of time, usually flashes by in Schoenberg's polystylistic epic. Not last night at the Proms: Simon Rattle is too much in love with the sounds he can get from the London Symphony Orchestra - here verging on a... Read more... |
Pick of the 2017 BBC Proms: from Orthodox chant to Oklahoma!Saturday, 08 July 2017
It’s the best-looking Proms season on paper for quite a few years. That might just be a different way of saying we like it, but no-one could reproach Director David Pickard for lack of original programming or diversity (look at the whole, bigger... Read more... |
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