tue 26/11/2024

Philharmonia

Kavakos, Philharmonia, Blomstedt, RFH review - a supreme valediction forbidding mourning

From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger...

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Hough, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - where the wild things are

This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along with reflections on the climate crisis as it threatens the traditional bonds between nature and culture....

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Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgement

The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their...

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Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journeys

As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The founder-director (in 1990) of Bach Collegium Japan, a distinguished harpsichordist-organist as well as one...

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The Creation, Choirs of King's College & New College Oxford, Philharmonia, Hyde, King's College Chapel, Cambridge - sublime setting for mundane performance

“Let his words resound on high,” sings the choir in the final chorus of The Creation. In King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, it is hard not to want to look up, to admire the splendour of the largest fan vaulting anywhere in Europe. King’s truly is...

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Capuçon, Philharmonia, Bancroft, RFH review - enjoyable all-American classics

The Philharmonia’s current season, Let Freedom Ring, celebrates American music through some notably interesting programming. And although last night’s concert was very conventionally structured, with an overture, concerto and big symphony to finish...

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Prom 42: Cho, Philharmonia, Rouvali review - inflation offset by sweet oases

Chopin’s piano concertos and Strauss “symphonic fantasia” Aus Italien are young men’s music, bursting with inspired ideas, but baggy at times, hard to steer. Elgar’s In the South is up there with the mature Strauss tone poems – even if it couldn’t...

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Fröst, Philharmonia, Lazarova, Kuusisto, Southbank Centre review - congenial new works complemented by live-wire classics

Anna Clyne’s engaging First Person here led me to two of her works in a Philharmonia rainbow. She curated a woodwind-based gem of a 6pm programme of works by four women composers, herself included, and her Clarinet Concerto could only gain from two...

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First Person: Anna Clyne on composing collaborations, not battles, in her latest concertos

Collaboration fuels a lot of my music – I love the interaction that takes me outside of my natural tendencies – it’s a source of inspiration and an opportunity to see my own music and creative process through a different lens.This past season I had...

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Mahler’s Third Symphony, Philharmonia, Paavo Järvi, RFH review - phosphorescent glow, depths only glimpsed

This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not...

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Philharmonia, Hrůša, RFH review - total brilliance in Bartók, Dvořák and Strauss

Salome was not to get her head on a silver platter: Jennifer Davis, due to sing the bloody final scene of Strauss’s opera, had been experiencing abdominal pains during her first pregnancy – mother and child are fine – and had to withdraw at a late...

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Batiashvili, Philharmonia, Shani, RFH review - Nordic mystery, Alpine tragedy

Sibelius and Mahler so often figure as the irreconcilable chalk and cheese of turn-of-the-century orchestral writing that it can be a salutary experience to hear them together on one bill.For sure, the Finn – whose Violin Concerto Lisa Batiashvili...

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