Classical music
theartsdesk
There's the First Night and there's the Last Night. Nowadays among the staples of the two-month world-famous festival of music at the Royal Albert Hall, there is also the Doctor Who Prom. Last night, to mark the 50th anniversary of the resurgent TV sci-fi show, a celebration was laid on featuring Murray Gold's music from the last eight years of Doctor Who.Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the London Philharmonic Choir under Ben Foster, there was also, to tickle the musical tastebuds of the fans, some music not hitherto noted for its connection to Daleks, Cybermen, time Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
What a way to open. Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony is exactly the kind of work that the BBC Proms and the Royal Albert Hall were made for, and as the surging, over-generous music and Walt Whitman’s ecstatic poetry ring out across the space it’s hard not to feel just a little bit of heart-swell. Add to that conductor Sakari Oramo making his debut as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and you have a First Night to rival the excitement of the Last Night.What a shame then that it was such an uneven evening of music. Like Britten and Vaughan Williams’s stormy seas, the highs and lows Read more ...
theartsdesk
Chris Christodoulou has been photographing conductors at the BBC Proms since 1981. Many attending the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall may well have attempted to spot him. They can give up on that game herewith. As he explains to theartsdesk, the venue with its many curtains and nooks allows him to work discreetly. (If you want to know what he looks like, see below right.) We have been featuring Chris’s pictures in an annual gallery since 2010. This year we have asked him what makes a good picture of a conductor, and how he goes about securing it. He explains, and has supplied us with a Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It is nearly 50 years since Martha Argerich played in Manchester. She performed with the Hallé Orchestra and the conductor was Claudio Abbado, making his UK debut. That was in 1965 and a year later they repeated their double act. Thanks to the Manchester International Festival and her special working relationship with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, music director of the Manchester Camerata, she bridged that gap last night.I must admit to a sense of some disappointment when she decided to replace the work advertised, Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with Beethoven’s First. However, she gave Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy, Poulenc, Ravel, Françaix: Piano Concertos Florian Uhlig (piano), Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern/Pablo González (Hänssler Classic)I salivated when I read the tracklisting on this immaculately produced disc. I wasn’t disappointed; you’d need a heart of ice to resist Florian Uhlig’s playing. Debussy’s three-movement Fantaisie pour piano et orchestre, completed in 1890, is a concerto in all but name. The first performance was heavily cut; Debussy withdrew the piece in a huff and it was only heard in full after his death. This is delectable music, firmly Read more ...
David Nice
As good old Catullus put it, I hate and love, you may ask why. No doubt it's my job as a critic to probe such difficult responses to Britten's Canticles. Why am I so repelled by the sickly-sweet lullaby Isaac sings just before daddy's about to put him to the sword in Canticle II, then so haunted by the sombre war requiem of Britten's Edith Sitwell setting, Canticle III? Ambivalence about Ian Bostridge's weird dominating presence and Neil Bartlett's marshalling of five responses to the five very different narratives doesn't make it any easier. Then again, there's no reason why anything should Read more ...
David Nice
"Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies, presented with typical elan in this year's Cheltenham Music Festival programme book. "Has anyone said Poulenc in response to this?" asks pianist James Rhodes. Well, yes - no less than 13 of the performers, including doyenne of both composers Felicity Lott, as against 21 for Britten, with six "I couldn't possibly chooses" in the middle.Festival Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Scotland’s East Neuk is a little like Hardy’s Wessex – less a geographical specific and more an idea, a resonance. Tucked up into the crook of the Firth of Forth, directly below St Andrews, the region encompasses the tiny coastal towns of Crail, Pittenweem, Anstruther and St Monans, where stern stone cottages and still sterner churches have done battle with the elements since at least the 9th century. But while there’s plenty of ancient history here, a visit each July will find it defiantly in dialogue with the present, as local churches, gardens and even a potato barn are taken over by the Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It was an inspired Manchester International Festival initiative to devote a concert to the work of Sir John Tavener as he approaches his 70th birthday. Not only that, but the programme featured three world premieres, including a choral piece specially commissioned for the MIF Sacred Voices, made up of 70 women from all faiths and none. Leading it all with the BBC Philharmonic was conductor Tecwyn Evans.The starting point was the first performance of “Love Duet”, written as the central “still point” of Tavener’s pantomime The Play of Krishna. Inspired by The Magic Flute, where Papageno and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Elgar: Enigma Variations, Vaughan Williams: The Wasps, Fantasia on Greensleeves Kansas City Symphony/Michael Stern (Reference Recordings)Listen to the tiny second Entracte from Vaughan Williams’s Wasps suite and you’re amazed at how such a beguiling, intoxicating piece could have remained so little known, and at how French the music sounds. Unsurprisingly, it was written after Vaughan Williams had briefly studied with Ravel. The lightness and delicacy are extraordinary, and Vaughan Williams’s typically modal chord progressions sound more Gallic than usual. Delicious stuff, following a Read more ...
Christopher Monks
“Without music, life would be a mistake”: Nietzsche. Sadly for many – indeed tragically, Nietzsche would say – music education in the UK has become so inconsistent that now, music barely features in some children’s lives at all. For years, county music services have been tied in to long contracts with services and teachers, some of whom have consistently delivered outstanding musical education, while others are tired and disconnected from the needs of the pupils they are teaching. It is detrimental enough not to have a musical education, but potentially even more damaging to a child to Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
He might not be a household name, but Martin Engstroem is classical music’s man behind the curtain, a quiet but significant force in the industry for some 40 years. Although his career has seen Engstroem by turns as major artist agent and head of A&R for Deutsche Grammophon, it is as founder and general director of the Verbier Festival – this year celebrating its 20th anniversary – that he has achieved perhaps his greatest successes.What started as a boutique affair with only 17 concerts has now grown to its biggest programme yet, encompassing some 62 ticketed events as well as many more Read more ...