cello
David Nice
There is a tide in the best-planned festivals that comes in and out almost imperceptibly, bringing with it changes as the days move on. Put it down to the kind of perfect planning that discards any one rigid theme, and to forging long-term links with performers who don't just pop in for one concert. That in this case has been the work of East Neuk Festival mastermind Svend-Einar McEwan-Brown, who not only ensures artists of a uniquely high quality over the years, but also introduces themes and mini-residencies with impressive subtlety.In the two and a half days I was there this year, Bach, Read more ...
David Nice
Former Royal Philharmonic Orchestra principal conductor Charles Dutoit has been exposed, to little surprise from musicians, as something of a roué whose apparent refusal to take "no" for an answer has rubbed up against the new #MeToo world. So his place in last night's concert was taken by Venezuelan Rafael Payare, not yet 40. Unfortunately it seems certain Dutoit would have captured the élan vital of Richard Strauss's Don Juan better than Payare - an accomplished soundsmith, on this evidence, but fatally uninterested in the operatic drama of Strauss's tone poems, or for that matter the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphoses, Nobilissima Visione, Concert Music for Strings and Brass WDR Symphony Orchestra/Marek Janowski (Pentatone)Instrumentalists appreciate Hindemith (all those solo sonatas!), as do those orchestral musicians lucky enough to have played his stuff. Sadly, he’s still box-office poison, and it’s difficult to think of a 20th century composer whose stock has fallen so low. Leonard Bernstein described Hindemith as "a master of melody, of harmony and counterpoint and rhythm and form and orchestration, and everything that has to do with music". Wise words, and one of Read more ...
David Nice
You can't have too much Dvořák in a single evening, at least not when the works in question operate at the highest level of volatility and melodic abundance like last night's overture, concerto and symphony. "Febrile centrists" might look like an oxymoron, but that just about sums up conductor Paavo Järvi and cellist Gautier Capuçon: superlative techniques, feet firmly planted only so that the music can fly, moving dexterously through the turbulence but never pushing too hard. With the Philharmonia burning for both, this was an incandescent event.Rarely did we encounter the Dvořák of sunlit Read more ...
Robert Beale
Alisa Weilerstein is making two visits to Manchester in just over three weeks. Last night it was with the Hallé, next time she’ll be guesting with the Czech Philharmonic. This one was to play the solo in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Sir Mark Elder conducting. She played it here, with him and the Hallé, just over five years ago, and it was her combination of technical brilliance and expressive ability that impressed then and did so again.It’s a deeply emotional work (written originally for Rostropovich), full of both agonies and challenges, and Weilerstein's qualities combined Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
This time of year lots of choirs give lots of Christmas concerts that are more or less the same: traditional repertoire perhaps sprinkled with a few novelties. But Tenebrae’s concert on Saturday at Kings Place broke the mould with some imaginative programming, giving us just enough Christmas but no more, and some quite stunning choral singing.Although scheduled as the final concert in the year-long "Cello Unwrapped" series, this was really a choral concert with obbligato cello items and a couple of solo cello numbers. But the occasional presence of the cello was enough to offer a distinctive Read more ...
David Nice
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. He tried to ignore the dark clouds of Russian revolutionary interference in an event he'd anticipated for so long, composing no music of public celebration. How different from 1899, when the unexcitingly titled but score-wise essential Music for the Press Celebrations saw Finland fully awake. Its UK premiere led the charge in a thrilling centenary concert Read more ...
David Nice
Only connect. As the Southbank Centre's International Chamber Music Series at St John's showcased supreme eloquence in two searing but perfectly-proportioned meditations from the Second World War, over the road at Smith Square Europe House was hosting a tribute to a name that may not resonate as much as Messiaen or Shostakovich, Hubert Butler. Nevertheless just before the Frenchman composed visions for himself and three fellow musicians in a German prisoner-of-war camp camp and the Russian did what he could to mark the horrors of the Holocaust, the Irishman had been in Vienna on his own Read more ...
David Nice
A legendary name and the chance to change the face of a cruel condition set the stakes high for what Prince Charles, in his programme preface for this Southbank spectacular, told us was called the Stop MS Jacqueline du Pré Tribute Concert. There she was on the screen (and in excellent sound) before any players appeared on stage, the vital cellist whose career was cut short, being celebrated by, among others, John Barbirolli for the splendid emotional excess of youth and by her husband Daniel Barenboim for the way she would hold a conversation in everything, the perfect chamber player. Those Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Hyperbole be damned. The most iconic English classical recording was made on 19 August 1965 in Kingsway Hall, London. Like Maria Callas singing Tosca, Jacqueline du Pré simply was the Elgar Cello Concerto once the LP hit the shops in time for Christmas. Proud, diffident, exuberant, reserved – all those words the English once used of themselves became freely associated with both performer and work, the two almost indistinguishable from one another in popular imagination.Again like Callas, she was a heaven-sent gift for EMI, and not a moment too soon. By 1965 Callas was on the slide – she had Read more ...
Guy Johnston
This adventure began in 2014 when my cello turned 300 years old. As birthdays go, it was a big one, so for me it felt important to do something special to celebrate. Why not imagine a journey back to Rome where it was made?The role of the cello has evolved greatly over the last 300 years, so I was intrigued to imagine the variety of experience this instrument has had over the years. It also prompted me to think about my own musical roots and journey, and how these two journeys converged. I first learnt about Tecchler cellos through my teacher, Steven Doane, who has been a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Guy Johnston: Tecchler’s Cello - From Cambridge to Rome (King’s College Cambridge)Acquiring a second-hand instrument always leads one to wonder what sort of a life it led before. Did said instrument enjoy a flourishing professional career, or was it abandoned in an attic for decades? Cherished by a master or mistreated by a bumbling amateur? Guy Johnston’s enjoyable anthology celebrates his recent acquisition of a 300-year-old cello made by one David Tecchler. He was a Bavarian-born craftsman who pitched up in Rome towards the end of the 17th century, one of his workshops being situated Read more ...