Brahms
Christopher Lambton
What happens in an orchestra when your designated conductor for three gigs at the end of the week phones in with Covid on Monday morning? By Monday afternoon, when he was writing his introduction to the programme notes for this concert, Alistair Mackie, chief executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, still didn’t know. He didn’t know who would conduct or even if the repertoire would change. By Wednesday we knew that the American conductor Jonathan Stockhammer (pictured below by Marco Borggreve) would be replacing the indisposed Finn Eva Ollikainen. With the first concert on Thursday Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Symphony No. 4, MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra Pittsburgh Symphony, Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings)Brahms 4 originally opened with four bars of soft wind chords. Thomas Hengelbrock reinstated them in his 2017 Sony recording; though interesting to hear, Brahms’s decision to delete them was wise, even if it made the symphony’s opening harder to conduct. This new Pittsburgh Symphony recording starts beautifully, Manfred Honeck lingering imperceptibly on the upbeat, an unmannered and affecting touch. ‘Unmannered’ sums this performance up; Honeck’s Brahms 4 is consistently Read more ...
Judith van Driel
In every life there are moments of great significance. Experiences that stick with us and define our own personal story.Growing up as a young violinist, one of those defining moments for me was the first time I played a piece by Johannes Brahms. It was his Second Violin Sonata; I was sixteen years old. Of course I had heard Brahms’s music before, but by bringing his notes to life myself I discovered a whole new range of emotions I had never experienced with any other composer. Or even more than that: the music opened up a new, illuminated world to me. Playing Brahms made me feel a little Read more ...
graham.rickson
Malcolm Arnold: Complete Symphonies and Dances National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny (Naxos)Working through these nine symphonies in chronological order is a fascinating and disturbing experience, the giddy peaks and deep troughs of Sir Malcolm Arnold’s personal life mirrored in sound. If you’ve only ever encountered Arnold’s lighter output, you’re in for a surprise. There’s plenty of sardonic humour and a lengthy string of improbably memorable tunes, but the prevailing impression is one of deep seriousness. Arnold often wrote for large Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
One benefit of the green tide in culture – music included – is that it should allow audiences to approach the arts inspired by the natural world in Britain, and elsewhere, a century ago with fresh ears and eyes. Weary over-familiarity can render a work such as Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending virtually inaudible, just as much as neglect.So all credit to the Philharmonia, conductor Elim Chan and soloist Hilary Hahn for giving the easy-listening standby a resonant new context at the Royal Festival Hall last night. Launched aloft by Hahn’s violin with the ravishing polish we expect from her Read more ...
David Nice
Returning to LSO St Luke’s, formerly a beacon in the darkness of semi-lockdown for the lucky few allowed to feast upon the London Symphony Orchestra from the gallery, felt the same, yet different, like so much since most of the rules were relaxed. Players were now closer together, sharing stands; the sound felt denser too (it’s bound to be loud in such a space, however handsome). A decided plus was that one of the great communicators among soloists, LSO featured artist and viola champion extraordinaire Antoine Tamestit, faced the players – and most of us upstairs – as he stood alongside Read more ...
graham.rickson
It’s easy to forget that what you see in a competition final isn’t always the full story, the jury members’ votes in this case based on what had gone on in the earlier rounds. The 20th Leeds International Piano Competition began its final stages in the city two weeks ago, the 63 competitors in the first round filmed earlier this year in 17 separate locations across the globe, the films streamed via Vimeo to the UK. 27 pianists were selected to come to Leeds, and it’s interesting to learn that this process, unimaginable a decade ago, was reportedly less stressful to all concerned and resulted Read more ...
David Nice
To excel at one massive Brahms piano concerto in a standard concert hall is cause enough for celebration. To master two over one evening in a very unorthodox space – namely, below the roof of Peckham’s former multi-storey car park – brings the performer close to recreative genius. The vision in this case was shared between pianist mover and shaker Samson Tsoy, Bold Tendencies – the wonderful organisation which has put together a series of concerts from remarkable artists beyond even its usual ken this summer, from Isata Kanneh-Mason and the Peckham Multi-Story Orchestra to the Jess Gillam Read more ...
David Nice
Nominally, this was a programme of three symphonies. The first, though, sounded like music re-cut and pasted from a very British film and the second was a suite, albeit impressively reworked, from an opera. The real deal, Brahms’s Third, is a very personal masterpiece, more inward than outward looking, and that, too, may have been why Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s latest Prom with her City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was less electrifying than its predecessors.Would “the Gipps Second Symphony” have made a reappearance had its composer been called Ralph and not Ruth? She is remarkable for her Read more ...
graham.rickson
One Movement Symphonies: Music by Barber, Scriabin and Sibelius Kansas City Symphony/Michael Stern (Reference Recordings)Placing these three single movements together serves to highlight just how great Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 is, and just how hard it is to create a genuinely cohesive single movement symphony. Schoenberg’s early Chamber Symphony is another convincing example, sounding far less cohesive in the composer’s orchestral transcription. Samuel Barber wrote his Symphony No. 1 in the mid-1930s. If you’ve only heard Barber’s Adagio or the Violin Concerto you’ll be surprised by Read more ...
David Nice
Young performers seeking platforms for their careers have had it especially rough over the past year, most slipping through the financial-support net and now facing the further blow of the Brexit visa debacle. So it’s always good to welcome quality streamings supporting their progress. The Royal Opera has kept its Jette Parker Young Artists regularly in the public eye – we’ve got to know and care about many of them – while Barbara Hannigan’s recently-launched Momentum project teams up new talent with more established performers, as happens in the Blackheath/Leeds Lieder Brahms special (three Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4 Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti (ABC Classic)Why these live performances from 2015 and 2013 have waited so long for release is a mystery; this is the best Brahms symphony disc I’ve heard in ages. Charles Mackerras and Robin Ticciati have shown that small-scale Brahms can work well, but this disc has more energy and feistiness than either. Here, Richard Tognetti leads and directs an augmented Australian Chamber Orchestra of around 50 players. The strings never sound anaemic and there’s some glorious wind and brass playing, the horn solos in Read more ...