Barbican
Gavin Dixon
William Christie kicked off Passion season in London this year with a particularly sombre reading of the St John. The veteran conductor brought his French choir and orchestra, Les Arts Florissants, and a line-up of relatively young soloists to the Barbican. They turned out to be variable, but the best of the voices elevated proceedings, as did Christie’s sensitive shaping of the music, the results always lyrical and engaging.At the risk of labouring tired stereotypes, the performance here sounded more French than German. The orchestral tone was less distinct, quieter and lacking focussed in Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Girl opens in a golden haze of sibling affection; a teenager is tickling a little boy one sunny morning in their bedroom. Lara is 15 and has just moved to a new flat with little brother Milo, 6 and single dad Mathias. The family have changed cities because Lara has been offered an 8-week trial at a prestigious ballet school. It’s a trial not just of dance skills but whether Lara can convince the teachers that although born a boy, a future as a ballerina is viable. After winning prizes at Cannes and being snapped up by Netflix, Girl looked set to be an arthouse hit, possibly even an Oscar Read more ...
David Nice
Vibrant rustic dancing to conclude the first half, a heavenly barcarolle to cast a spell of silence at the end of the second: Bernard Haitink's 90th birthday celebrations of middle-European mastery wrought yet more magic in Dvořák and Mahler after his first concert of Mozart and Bruckner. He seemed perhaps a little more frail, less spiritually concentrated this time; but that wasn't going to get in the way of the phenomenal stick technique nor of the London Symphony Orchestra sounding, once again, more like its counterparts in Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna than ever before.It's possible that Read more ...
David Nice
So this is how Bruckner's Fourth Symphony should go. It's taken a master conductor just past his 90th birthday and an orchestra on top form to teach me. No doubt Claudio Abbado and Brucknermeister Gunter Wand could have done so, too, but I never heard them live in this, the "Romantic", and they are no longer with us. Bernard Haitink - he eschews the "Sir" with a typically self-deprecating shrug - evinced a tearful semi-secret rapture in performances of Schumann's Second and Beethoven's "Pastoral" with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; that he should do it in three-quarters of this Bruckner Read more ...
David Nice
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic scale we’ve had the Shakespeare compendiums Kings of War and Roman Tragedies from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, newly merged with the city's Stadsschouwburg to form this present company. Most concentrated in intensity of vision, in my experience, have been director/playwright Simon Stone's Belvoir Theatre Sydney adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, and now his Dutch Medea for our times. They almost make a diptych, with the same hermetic acting space - this time white and open, not black and glassed Read more ...
David Nice
Would Verdi and Puccini have composed more non-operatic music, had they thrived in a musical culture different to Italy's? Hard to say. What we do know is that they both became absolute masters of orchestration – Puccini rather quicker than Verdi, living as he did in an entirely post-Wagnerian era. Verdi left us one great mass, the Requiem, Puccini a youthful and honest expression of the liturgy as well as other early pieces he mined for Manon Lescaut and La bohème. It made a pretty, occasionally stirring climax to an evening which could have done with an absolute masterpiece.One such, even Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
A day devoted entirely to the life and work of György Ligeti celebrated this composer’s remarkable oeuvre through a sequence programme of film, talks and concerts of his music. The final two of these performances were a short recital of his choral works, given by the BBC Singers in St Giles’ Cripplegate, and a concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra of some of Ligeti’s orchestral masterpieces in the Barbican Hall.Under their chief conductor Sofi Jeannin – who led with style, clarity and precision – the BBC Singers (female members, picured below at the later event) opened their concert with Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Time was when the BBC Symphony Orchestra played austerely wholesome programmes of modern and romantic classics to third-full houses. Now on a more varied diet – such as the collaboration with Neil Gaiman and Alwyn's Miss Julie in concert announced this week for their forthcoming season – they pull in respectable audiences, though last night’s concert of classical, romantic and contemporary Austrians had a reassuringly old-fashioned feel about it.The orchestra itself has also been transformed under Sakari Oramo’s leadership, into one of the most flexible, up-for-anything large ensembles in the Read more ...
David Nice
Give me some air! Stop screaming at me! Those are not exclamations I'd have anticipated from the prospect of a Vienna Philharmonic Mahler Ninth Symphony, least of all under the purposeful control of Ádám Fischer. Less well known here than his younger brother Iván - both have been admirably outspoken critics of Orbán's regime - Ádám has impressed with his stunning Budapest Wagner and his masterful Mahler cycle as chief conductor of the little-known Düsseldorf Symphony. Maybe if he'd brought the Düsseldorfers here, there would have been more of a sense of inner feeling; maybe the Viennese are Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk really like that stuff. If fans can’t get enough of all the interconnections and the minutiae, the truth is that a concert stands or falls by what actually happens in the moment, whether it actually works or doesn't. And in this Barbican set, the first of a short European tour, Redman, cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley and Brian Blade at the drums really did deliver. These are four players whose immediacy of response, virtuosity, ability to raise the temperature Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The arc of Daniil Trifonov’s reputation has soared and then, to some ears, stalled in a familiar modern way. Russian Wunderkind pianist bags a sackful of competition trophies (Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky prizes; Gramophone Awards). Early recitals and recordings display stupendous technique allied to audacious, beyond-his-years interpretation. Hype shoots off the scale. The prodigy from Nizhny Novgorod (born 1991!) is the new Richter, Rubinstein, Argerich und so weiter… Then come the iffy PR-driven choices; the unwisely stretched repertoire; the odd duff gig. The jury, having garlanded the Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Imagine for a moment that you are at, say, the Derby. It’s pretty good. But then in flies Pegasus, the mythical winged horse. What happens?We need to talk about these rare moments of almost inexplicable magic in concerts, because unless I’m massively mistaken, that is one crucial factor that keeps us going to them. Perhaps you’ve witnessed one. Something happens. Some might say that a spirit descends. An atmosphere comes to surround us and we all sense it, musicians and audience alike, and we lose ourselves in it together. Welcome to Milton Court’s evening with the Doric String Quartet and Read more ...