Classical music
Connolly, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bělohlávek, BarbicanSaturday, 02 October 2010
As experienced Wagnerian Jiří Bělohlávek came on to launch the BBCSO's new season in mid-air with the Tristan Prelude, I wondered whether the world's finest interpreter of Isolde's serving maid Brangäne, lustrous mezzo Sarah Connolly, was waiting to... Read more... |
Mullova, London Symphony Orchestra, Nelsons, Barbican HallFriday, 01 October 2010
This season's LSO artist-in-focus, violinist Viktoria Mullova, is an incorrigible off-roader. The rougher the terrain the better. Early, modern, rock, folk: she'll absorb their shocks, vault their bumps, relish their pitfalls and come out without so... Read more... |
Grimaud, Philharmonia, Salonen, Royal Festival HallThursday, 30 September 2010
Esa-Pekka Salonen and his dauntless band of Philharmonia players have been wrestling with heroes. After a celebration of Wagner's Tristan, the legend-making shifted further north last night. Here was Sibelius first as the plain-singing, well-loved... Read more... |
New Generation at Maida ValeThursday, 30 September 2010Eleven years is a long time when you're launching young talent on the world. Since 1999, BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists have gone forth and multiplied. All the "graduates" have outstanding careers, and among them some of the names which will... Read more... |
Matsuev, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallSunday, 26 September 2010
Shchedrin's best works, in my experience - and his output has been prolific of late - colour and treat the themes of others: chastushki or Russian street songs in the brilliant Naughty Limericks Concerto (to be heard in the second programme of the... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 12Saturday, 25 September 2010
This month’s selection includes a rare recording of a Danish masterpiece and a glorious late-Romantic Austrian symphony. There’s a thrilling set of Bartók piano concertos and music composed by Dvořák’s son-in-law. Going back further in time, we’... Read more... |
The Bach Dynasty, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore HallFriday, 24 September 2010
No, not some crazy remake of an Eighties soap featuring various members of the Bach family (though I wouldn’t put it past certain channel programmers to come up with the idea), but the Academy of Ancient Music’s (AAM) new series of concerts, which... Read more... |
London Philharmonic launches concert streamingFriday, 24 September 2010For those of us who can't hear Vladimir Jurowski's intriguing LPO programme on Saturday night live - Gergiev calls over at the Barbican, in a typically frustrating London clash - all is not lost. We'll be able to hear it from 4 October streamed via... Read more... |
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 23 September 2010
From primeval baying to a very human song in excelsis, Mahler's Third Symphony cries out for Olympian interpretation. That I've found in recent years with Abbado in Lucerne and the Albert Hall, Bělohlávek at the Barbican and Salonen on the South... Read more... |
Llŷr Williams, Wigmore HallThursday, 23 September 2010
Do paws get any mightier than Llŷr Williams's? When not crashing down onto the Wigmore Hall Steinway like a ton of singing bricks, they were digging deep, like strong, nifty moles, foraging for the contrapuntal melodies that lay beneath... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Rodion ShchedrinSaturday, 18 September 2010
The Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin has long been damned faintly by two facts - that he is the husband of the Bolshoi prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and that he was for a long time the president of the Russian Composers' Union in the USSR. These... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Llantwit Major: Arvo Pärt in the Vale of GlamorganSunday, 12 September 2010
Amazingly, the Vale of Glamorgan Festival has been on the go for more than 40 years, and has got better and better as it has gone along. Until recently, any kind of mould-breaking musical enterprise was likely to collide with the entrenched... Read more... |
