Barbican
David Nice
Last Thursday I was giving a talk before a concert in Birmingham, decently but not inspiringly conducted by the much-liked Vasily Sinaisky. Had I been in London I could have taken my pick between two greater interpreters, Valery Gergiev launching his Berlioz series with the London Symphony Orchestra and veteran Yury Temirkanov returning to one of his standard programmes with the Philharmonia.Both appeared on the list of 549 "trustees" supporting Vladimir Putin’s 2012 re-election campaign. Temirkanov recently established chauvinist credentials which made the foolish remarks of young Vasily Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Berlioz wanted to make the first arrival of his demon onstage unforgettable, with an extreme sound effect - violins and violas marked sul ponticello, strettissimo, starting fortissimo, with interjections from three trombones snarling in minor seconds. In last night's performance of La Damnation de Faust that moment was glossed over. It flashed past as if it had never happened.In many of the sections of the work which involved the vocal soloists and chorus, particularly in the first half, Valery Gergiev seldom looked up from his score. It produced a detached reading of the work. He took a Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
This was Sakari Oramo's first concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra since taking over as chief conductor. Of course he knows the orchestra well already, but it was important to make this a good ’un, and so it was.It opened with the world premiere of a 20-minute work by French composer Tristan Murail, with the double title Reflections/Reflets. As the title perhaps suggests it offered an evocative, colouristic sound world. The first half, "Spleen", dealt in bells, swells and waves rising out of a murky brass and low string background. The second, "High Voltage", featured slow glissandi, Read more ...
David Nice
Back at the Barbican for a new season after a Far Eastern tour, the BBC Symphony Orchestra returned to pull off a characteristic stunt, a generous four-work programme featuring at least one piece surely no-one in the audience woud have heard live before. This time, the first quarter belonged exclusively to the unaccompanied BBC Singers in one of the most demanding sets of the choral repertoire. After which the seemingly humble but dogged and vivacious Marc Minkowski helped create orchestral magic of three very different kinds, defining French composers’ infinite capacity for play.Serious Read more ...
edward.seckerson
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second residency at the Barbican Centre Riccardo Chailly pulled focus on an entirely new sounding Brahms. Gone were all those bad performance practices, bad habits, from the early 20th century, gone was the lingering romanticism, the willful soupiness, and in with a vengeance came a classical rigour, a lean and hungry vitality. Like so much of what we have come to expect of Chailly the first of this four concert series with its attendant side events brought a total re-evaluation of the composer: no longer the conservative romantic, the polar opposite of Read more ...
David Nice
Milton Court’s new concert hall is a mighty small space, but the BBC Singers under their chief conductor David Hill were determined to launch their residency there with a musical epic of world events from Genesis to the post-nuclear era. And they carried it off triumphantly, if with some ear-singeing resonances, in American works from the last 66 years ringing with bright tonalities. The real surprise was to find Nevadan choral guru Eric Whitacre reaching for the stars as confidently, if not as consistently, as Steve Reich in his 1984 masterpiece The Desert Music.Copland did well by this Read more ...
David Nice
Night life in the Square Mile, at least from the perspective of my evening routes around the Barbican, is dominated by booze and sportiness. The way to last Thursday’s concert was blocked by a Bloomberg relay marathon, and cycling through the tunnel towards Milton Court yesterday evening, I encountered the bizarre spectacle of carnival-style trucks pedalled by a dozen drinkers apiece, sitting at a central "bar" and already well oiled. City money, though, still supports culture, and never more impressively than in underpinning Milton Court's new collection of performance and teaching spaces Read more ...
David Nice
Rumour machines have been thrumming to the tune of “Rattle as next LSO Principal Conductor”. Sir Simon would, it’s true, be as good for generating publicity as the current incumbent, the ever more alarming Valery Gergiev. But if the orchestra wanted to do something fresh and daring, it would be better advised to take the plunge with Robin Ticciati, a disarming mix of youth - he’s still only 30 - and mastery; his romantic rubato, the freedom with the phrases, already strikes me as more convincing than Rattle’s has ever been, as last night's Dvořák testified.If that more interesting Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This season opener was about closure too. The London Symphony Orchestra was back at the office last night, but this fresh stretch of concerts opened with an opera it has been performing while also acquiring a suntan in Aix-en-Provence. A new cast of singers replaced gaudy costumes and facepaint with elegant evening garb, and semi-acted their roles on the thin strip of forestage not occupied by the massed ranks of the orchestra.The concept of the concert performance has never had more enthusiastic support than at the recent run of seven Wagner operas, amounting to a gazillion hours without Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Last night the “freaky” Devendra Banhart didn’t make an appearance. No songs were performed cross-legged, nor were there any wig-outs. For the majority of the evening the 32-year-old American-Venezuelan hippy was, by his standards, practically understated. In keeping with his new album, Mala, he chose to emphasise songwriting over personality. For those of us who were beginning to lose faith in him, it all came as something of a relief.At the beginning of Banhart’s psychedelic-folk career, the tall singer’s exotic approach led many to consider him a wunderkind. His imagination was wild and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
What rare luxury. A three-concert series from the London Symphony Orchestra and their Principal Guest Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is lure enough, but add three collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist and you have to rope off a special area in the Barbican for the returns queue. Rarer still – it would be worth every moment of the wait.The concert-triptych has been a meditation on musical friendships and relationships, with long-time colleagues Ma and Tilson Thomas paying homage to the complex network of emotions and influences that existed between Britten, Copland and Shostakovich, three Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Although originally commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Benjamin Britten’s opera Owen Wingrave was always intended to be an opera-for-television. Perhaps it’s this unusual pedigree that has scared off potential performances of this little-seen work, perhaps it’s the piece’s awkward drama and barely digested polemic. Either way it’s a shame. This late score is full of Brittenish melodic fragments and orchestral colours, and if the opera house wouldn’t exactly be the poorer for its absence the concert hall certainly would.Why the inherently naturalistic medium of television should have Read more ...