Classical music
First Person: 'We Have Found a Better Land'Monday, 02 November 2015
"Helo, ti yw Mark?" A friendly-looking woman on the tiny plane asks me my name. She is a teacher from a Welsh-speaking school in Patagonia, Ysgol yr Hendre, escorting her pupils home from a trip to Cardiff. "I was told to look out for you on the... Read more... |
LPO, Skrowaczewski, RFHSunday, 01 November 2015
Stanisław Skrowaczewski has become a legend in his own, considerable, lifetime. From the ecstatic ovation as he took the stage, it seemed many were here just to see this iconic figure in the flesh. Fortunately, the performance of Bruckner’s Fifth... Read more... |
Sonica 2015, GlasgowSunday, 01 November 2015
Sometimes it’s visual art with a sonic slant; sometimes it’s music with a visual slant. Glasgow’s Sonica – created by producers Cryptic, now in its third year and bigger than ever – feels like a thoroughly modern festival, defying genre boundaries... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Edward GardnerSaturday, 31 October 2015
It’s odd seeing the whole of Edward Gardner, as upright as a guardsman until a passionate passage unleashes a repertoire of fierce jabs, deft feints and rapid thrusts. For nine years Gardner's main post was on the podium in the pit of the London... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Montanari, Sibelius, Stephen KovacevichSaturday, 31 October 2015
Montanari: Violin Concertos Johannes Pramsohler (violin and director), Ensemble Diderot (Audax Records)Versatile baroque violinist Johannes Pramsohler’s latest act of musical exhumation introduces us to one Antonio Maria Montanari, a violinist... Read more... |
Tchaikovsky Competition Winners TourFriday, 30 October 2015
For a few very lucky competition winners there is a shopping trip where they are paraded around the world. A terrific opportunity, though a horrible experience, probably. Most competition winners have only a new line in their CV to stare at after... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Brecon Baroque FestivalSunday, 25 October 2015
The city of Brecon (county town of former Brecknockshire, now lost in the spurious and far-flung county of Powys) is a long way from Leipzig and on the face of it has little in common with the home of Bach and the native city of Wagner. But once a... Read more... |
Fröst, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanSaturday, 24 October 2015
Final thoughts: a fitting theme for the farewell concert of this year’s Gewandhaus Barbican residency. But the connections proved tenuous: Death and Transfiguration, the gloomy opener, was written when Strauss was only 25, and the Mozart Clarinet... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dvořák, Toivo Kuula, MozartSaturday, 24 October 2015
Dvořák, Suk, Janáček: Violin Concertos Josef Špaček (violin), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek (Supraphon)Josef Suk's expansive single movement Fantasy in G minor is a big-boned, lovable work; it's a surprise to learn that Suk complained... Read more... |
Tetzlaff, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanFriday, 23 October 2015
In practice as well as in prospect, the second in Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss/Mozart trilogy was a concert of two very different halves. The first offered small Bavarian and Austrian beer in the shape of Strauss’s fustian Macbeth, unbelievably close... Read more... |
Pires, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chailly, BarbicanWednesday, 21 October 2015
Riccardo Chailly’s Strauss odyssey with his Leipzig orchestra peaked in Saxony last year, the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. I was lucky to catch a razor-sharp Till Eulenspiegel and a saturated Death and Transfiguration in Dresden’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Pianist Stephen KovacevichSunday, 18 October 2015
“Whatever happened to Stephen Bishop?” is not a question likely to be asked by followers of legendary pianism. Born in San Pedro, Los Angeles on 17 October 1940, the young talent took his stepfather’s name as his career was launched at the age of 11... Read more... |
