Classical music
Boyd Tonkin
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn Terfel’s still-formidable bass-baritone made the great vault of Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford shrink to a shoebox.With all the vocal charisma of old, and lashings of unashamed theatricality, Terfel (pictured below by Mitch Jenkins) delivered the great despairing lament, “It is enough”, that most obviously acknowledges the debt Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah owes to the Passions of JS Bach. Mendelssohn’s outcast prophet pleads for the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle in the programme seemed likely to come from James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel – his percussion concerto, with the star name of Colin Currie as soloist – and from Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances (especially the third of them) to precede it.Afterwards, it was to be Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony to finish, and that’s been played and heard many times before. In the event, the first two works did sparkle, but the symphony intrigued.The Arnold dances are great fun: Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
There were points when this concert felt like the musical equivalent of watching the atom split – as well as notes there were animal shrieks, sinister rattles, sibilant serpentine sussurations, and primal throaty rumbles. Indian-American composer Shruthi Rajasekar, South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe (pictured below), and the never less than subversive Hermes Experiment unveiled a fascinating laboratory of noise in a lunchtime session that was as exhilarating as it was enjoyably unexpected.The programme opened with Selaocoe, one of the most charismatic and radically experimental Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)Who’d have thought that Igor Levit and Christian Thielemann would be such effective partners? Levitt is one of the most cerebral and thoughtful of pianists with a string of excellent Sony albums, and there’s the worry that any collaborator won’t successfully step up to his level. But this set of Brahms Concertos is excellent, the dialogue between the two musicians transcribed in this set’s booklet suggesting that this was a bromance made in heaven. Concerto No. 1’s Read more ...
David Nice
From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger brought into play, the left hand occasionally visible to me as he raised it at moments of high emotion. The Philharmonia simply burned for him, every phrase and dynamic brought into focus to heighten an already assured vision.Only absolute mastery will do for Mahler's Ninth, his deepest symphony, its first movement alone a monumental test of ebb and Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
When the Venezuelan Rafael Payare was appointed as conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) two years ago, his first action was to blast his way through a French Berlitz course. A graduate of the El Sistema music-teaching project – where he had made his mark in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra as a horn player – one of his key challenges was to master from scratch the language in which this staunchly Francophone orchestra conducts its rehearsals.Watching him conduct however – his tall angular frame sometimes hunched-bird-of-prey like on the podium, sometimes erupting into a nimble Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
For 30 years, La Serenissima have re-mapped the landscape of the Italian Baroque repertoire so that its towering figures, notably Vivaldi, no longer look like isolated peaks but integrated parts of a spectacular range. The ensemble founded by violinist Adrian Chandler delves deep into the archives to recover neglected music not just as a nerdish passion (though there’s nowt wrong with that) but the basis for practical performing editions that restore these lost sounds to life.At the Wigmore Hall, their “Giro d’Italia” series will span the 18th-century peninsula. It began with a seven-course Read more ...
David Nice
Is this the same Roman Rabinovich who drew harp-like delicacy from one of Chopin’s Pleyel pianos, and seeming authenticity from a 1790s grand which may have belonged to Haydn, both in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey? He clearly cares about the possibilities of any instrument on which he plays, so the natural consequence is maximum sonority on a modern Steinway. Too cultured to deafen, as Beatrice Rana did in this small space, he still compels you to listen to every note.You feel that Haydn would have loved the startling fullness with which the Sonata in F, HXV1/29 began. Rabinovich Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Carmina Burana isn’t a masterpiece: it’s primarily a bit of fun; fun to listen to, fun to play, really fun to sing.Few and far between are the performances where it ever manages to be much more than that, though this RSNO concert came close, mainly thanks to the conducting of Marzena Diakun, making her debut with the orchestra. The faster, louder sections were kept on an admirably tight leash so that the opening two "Fortuna" choruses really crackled, and the rumbustious choruses in the tavern were a hoot, the percussion giving it what can only be described as “welly.”The bite and precision Read more ...
Robert Beale
Anna Clyne’s This Moment had its UK premiere at Saturday’s BBC Philharmonic concert. She’s the orchestra’s composer in association, and this seven-minute piece was first played by the Philadelphia Orchestra last year.Inspired by the calligraphy of the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Zen Master and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh, it’s (in the words of the composer) “a response to our collective grief and loss in recent years” and very much a meditation on death. Not too cheerful a subject, you might think, but Thích Nhất Hạnh said that when you meditate on death you love life more, and that was Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Victims of their own success in the postwar era of well-recorded sound, the Brandenburg Concertos first arrived in the ears of listeners from my generation via glossy, plush and polished recordings by heavyweight orchestras of a sort that would have baffled Bach. Four decades ago, period-conscious bands began to strip the gloopy varnish off and let the strange, bold paintwork beneath shine. Yet the look, and sound, of these six pieces “for several instruments”, rather obsequiously dedicated by the job-seeking Bach to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721, can still startle audiences. Last Read more ...
Alec Frank-Gemmill
One former teacher of mine said of their recording of the Mozart horn concertos “I’m not really sure why I bothered”. Said recording is excellent, so they were probably just being excessively modest. Nevertheless, every new version of these pieces does beg the question, why do we need another one? I was lucky enough to be offered a contract with the record label BIS 10 years ago on the understanding that I would definitely record Mozart’s horn concertos, among other things. It has taken me this long to get around to it. My experiences making discs on period instruments, of transcriptions Read more ...