Classical music
David Nice
Founded two decades ago by Franco Buitoni and his wife Ilaria in league with their good friend Mitsuko Uchida, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust never seems to put a foot wrong in its choices: the present and future are as dazzling as the last 20 years. As well as giving generous long-term support to over 200 artists and groups, BBT commissions new works – more than 50 to date – and has set up a Communities wing "to encourage social cohesion".Which is how this weekend started off in Peckham’s Multi-Storey Car Park with a gobsmackingly brilliant event. Composer Kate Whitley has written eloquently on Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder has a special affection for the music of Elgar. They share a birthday, on 2 June, and his time with the Hallé has included more than one celebration of the composer at this time of year.Now that his departure as music director is in sight (at the end of next season), and there’s something of a retrospective quality about his remaining programmes, the last two weekends have witnessed a return to three of the greatest triumphs of his Hallé tenure, in the form of the three Elgar oratorios, The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The Kingdom.All three have been recorded by him Read more ...
David Nice
Eight years ago I was privileged to be in Denmark on the 150th anniversary of Carl Nielsen’s birth, experiencing for the first time live his masterly Saul and David. The return visit was too brief and unexpectedly fraught, including a complicated return to Odense to see work in progress for a new Carl Nielsen Museum. Not a success, but redeemed by an impressive concert in a big series from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its fine chief conductor Fabio Luisi.The Odense leg was beset by problems. No trains heading from Copenhagen airport, so a twice-as-long taxi journey, and a return Read more ...
graham.rickson
Isata Kanneh-Mason: Childhood Tales (Decca)Ernst von Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song is one of the great concertante works for piano and orchestra, rightly compared to a full-scale concerto by soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason. You’ll struggle to hear a live performance though in the UK, though; hopefully this high-profile release will give the work a leg up. My favourite joke comes at the very start, with Dohnányi’s portentous, brilliantly scored intro dragging us into the depths before a naïve, familiar tune enters as if nothing untoward has happened. This big-hearted piece is Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
An evening of Mozart favourites in a landmark church on a sunny evening: that might suggest a perfect recipe for gently soporific tourist entertainment. Thankfully, not in the hands of Kristian Bezuidenhout and the English Concert. At St Martin-in-the-Fields, the South African-born Australian virtuoso of the period keyboard joined the Baroque orchestral powerhouse with which he collaborates as principal guest. Together, they stripped the varnish, and shook the dust, from two treasures whose sheer familiarity can render them in some way inaudible. The Jupiter Symphony, prefaced by the piano Read more ...
Kate Whitley
We at the Multi-Story Orchestra have been writing a new piece of music about social media. In one of the writing sessions I remember one of our musicians spending every second she wasn't playing on her phone, checking likes and comments as she'd released something that day. That feeling – being at the mercy of an unwinnable urge to be validated by other people's approval - is what our new piece is about.It was so cool hearing our young people's takes on it. They've grown up with social media in a way I can only imagine, and the original idea for a piece about social media was theirs. We wrote Read more ...
David Nice
Union Jacks could be stowed away, and EU ones figuratively, furtively flourished: this was a concert of celebratory music for a Hanoverian king by a Saxon composer, by then recently become a British citizen, performed by a French ensemble in a Roman Catholic church which once served the Spanish Embassy. The present King, having already made a start repairing Britain’s damaged reputation on the continent by speaking German in Berlin, surely approved.How do I know? Because there he was, as we all suspected he would be because of tight security, enjoying among other things a more relaxed Read more ...
Joseph Middleton
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.” Replace a few of George Orwell’s words in 1984 and most musicians right now would find alarming resonance in the statement: “If you want a picture of the present, imagine a boot stamping out classical music – for ever.” Orwell’s slightly altered prophecy could be used to sum up the widespread cultural vandalism happening in the UK right now despite the fact we are world-leaders in this area (as everyone would know who watched the recent Coronation). Because of choices that are being made by a few Read more ...
David Nice
Do we really need instrumental Shostakovich with lighting, movement, costumes and video projection? I might have said no before having seen what the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra could do with former leader Terje Tønnesen, performing the Chamber Symphony by heart in dramatic style. It seemed likely that memorizing even more music under new Artistic Director Pekka Kuusisto, and performing it in an insanely demanding dramatic framework, with no word spoken, could work.It does, beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. This collaboration is with a visionary Danish team: director Mikkel Harder Munck- Read more ...
David Nice
Conversation just before this concert started concerned Verdi’s Il trovatore and the truism that it needs “the four greatest voices in the world”. Whether or not the quartets we heard by Mozart, Prokofiev and Brahms demand the same in string terms, they all hit breathtaking levels of humanity, thanks to the singing interaction of the Jerusalems, the peerless chamber music equivalent of the Berlin Philharmonic.Never has Mozart’s D major Quartet K575 sounded more like one of his great comic (or semicomic) operas, with only passing shadows like the sudden unison gruffness of the Menuetto. The Read more ...
Robert Beale
Innovation is always a risky business. Opera North’s vision and ambition for this production is to create, in effect, a new genre: a combination of staged choral-orchestral performance with contemporary dance.Partnership and diversity are the buzz words – good ones, too – and the concept brings together the opera company’s soloists, chorus and orchestra with dancers from both Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre and South Africa’s Jazzart Dance Theatre, plus some help from Capetown Opera.The link here is choreographer Dane Hurst, until recently artistic director of Phoenix and now its artistic Read more ...
Simon Thompson
What’s better than having a star soloist on the billing for a concert? Three star soloists! The Royal Scottish National Orchestra billed this concert as its “All Star Gala”, and that’s more than just a shrewd marketing move (though it was that: this was the busiest audience they’ve had all season). It’s an entirely fitting title for a concert that features Nicola Benedetti on violin, Sheku Kanneh-Mason on cello and Benjamin Grosvenor on piano, all brought together to perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.While they’re here, however, the orchestra wisely decided to put their guests’ talents to Read more ...