Classical music
David Nice
When celebrated individuals get together to play chamber music on special occasions, the result can often turn out as what the late cellist of the Borodin Quartet, Valentin Berlinsky, disparagingly called "festival quality" – meaning a clash, rather than a blend, of personalities. That was never the case for a moment in the opening concert of the eighth Highgate International Chamber Music Festival.Two of its three founders, violinist/composer Natalie Klouda and cellist Ashok Klouda, had invited two of the most experienced soloists in the string world - powerful personality Alexander Read more ...
graham.rickson
Michael Wolters & Paul Norman: Catalogue d’Emojis Cobalt Duo (Birmingham Record Company)“This piece… that you might have paid good money for, was created in utter desperation.” Michael Wolters talks about Catalogue d’Emojis over some mellow guitar noodling during the first Interlude, admitting that his initial idea was “crap.” What he co-created he is actually much better than that. Devised with Paul Norman for one of the concerts held to celebrate the opening of the new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, this Catalogue aims to do for the humble emoji what Messiaen did for bird song. Read more ...
Eyck, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - theremin takes centre stage
Robert Beale
The theremin is still a relatively rare visitor to concert halls, particularly in a solo role, but Carolina Eyck is changing that. Her instrument, invented by Lev Termen just 100 years ago, is a relatively simple piece of kit – a tone generator controlled by the player’s hands, which never touch it but rather appear to be conjuring sound out of thin air.In many ways its most daunting characteristic is the sheer range of sounds it can create. The right hand controls pitch, and that can vary over a wide range of the normally audible spectrum, with the distinctive notes of conventional scales or Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
There aren’t many musicians who could appear as composer, singer and violist on a single programme but that was Caroline Shaw’s lot last night. As part of Kings Place’s Venus Unwrapped season, the first half comprised entirely her music, played by the Attacca Quartet and featuring Shaw as vocalist, and she then re-appeared with viola in hand after the interval for Mendelssohn’s second string quintet.Shaw was the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for her stunning vocal work Partita, written for the ensemble Roomful of Teeth, which I was really disappointed not to Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The new "eufonie" festival is dedicated to the music of Poland and its neighbouring countries. This is its second year, and the scale of the project has increased substantially from last year’s first run. The programme is primarily classical music, with a strong focus on works written since the fall of communism, but several new strands have been added, bringing contemporary dance, klezmer, and even a club night, into the mix. Polish music figures large, not least in the opening and closing concerts, featuring respectively a Lutosławski symphony and a Penderecki oratorio. But that is no bad Read more ...
David Nice
The megastars are here at the Barbican, for an intensive three days in the case of the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, throughout the season as the hall shines an "Artist Spotlight" on pianist Yuja Wang. Despite a shallow opener showcasing the individual talents of the Los Angeles principals and daft, rollicking Sousa at the end, there was a seriousness of intent and depth of focus that belied the touring glitz. The biggest miracle, perhaps, came in a three-minute encore from Wang - her third - but you couldn't fail to be deeply impressed by the execution of the rest.Just when you think you're Read more ...
David Nice
If you're going to run a music festival with flair, it's not enough just to have a run of star performers who pop up for single events. The 11th Wimbledon International Music Festival can offer those – Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, for instance, were there a week ago. But founder and festival director Anthony Wilkinson had also witnessed the phenomenal programming of violinist Hugo Ticciati at his own O/Modernt festival in Sweden, and booked him as Artist in Residence for five events. I heard two of them on Saturday, Labyrinths: A Double Bill, and witnessed some of the most hyper-refined Read more ...
graham.rickson
Donnacha Dennehy: The Hunger Alarm Will Sound/Alan Pierson, with Katherine Manley and Iarla Ó Lionáird (Nonesuch)The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 resulted in the deaths of one million Irish citizens to starvation and prompted a further million to emigrate. In 1851, American social reformer Asenath Nicholson travelled across the Atlantic to document exactly what was happening, traversing the length of Ireland on foot. Nicholson’s text forms a substantial chunk of the libretto of Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger, extracts from her report interspersed with lyrics taken from the song Na Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
For better or worse, because of Visconti’s classic film the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony now inevitably means Venice in its gloomiest moods. So there turned out to be a grim timeliness in a performance on an evening that coincided with the most devastating “acqua alta” to flood the city in half a century. Yet, in keeping with everything he does with the London Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski’s reading at the Royal Festival Hall made us think afresh about an iconic work and dispel its more hackneyed, reach-me-down associations.Not for Jurowski the languid late-Romantic swoon Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Switch off for a phrase or two and it’s easy to miss the point in a Haydn symphony that makes each one of them odd and unique. In No. 74, played last night with understated class by the English Chamber Orchestra, that point occurs in the first movement, at the end of the second theme. All has gone just as you’d expect. A three-chord call to attention – only one more than the so-revolutionary Eroica – and straight to the business of the day, a worker ant of a melody, busying around with inscrutably purposeful energy. The second theme swoops in – then stops, like a sparrow at the end of a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Prague Symphony Orchestra are in town, their Cadogan Hall concert the London leg of a UK tour. It’s ambitious, including Mahler’s epic Third Symphony in five different cities, each with a local chorus. The orchestra itself, Prague’s second band, is a spirited and distinctively Central European ensemble. And they have an interesting conductor, the young Finn Pietari Inkinen, who, since taking charge of the Prague Symphony in 2015 has also added Saarbrucken and Tokyo orchestras to his portfolio, and was recently named as the conductor for Bayreuth’s new Ring cycle next year.Cadogan Hall isn Read more ...
Sally Beamish
I was 13. It was a Saturday, and Mum was working. On this occasion she asked if I’d like to come along and bring a book. I was wearing a dress I’d made myself – psychedelic orange and pink, with red edging. It was 1969. I don’t remember what the book was, but I know I didn’t look at it once that day.The Kingsway Hall was set up for a group of 15 or so musicians, with a harpsichord at the centre. Mum was in the second violins. I was welcomed by her friends, who asked how the music lessons were going. The elegant, charming and charismatic man called Neville made me especially welcome, with lots Read more ...