chamber music
Classical music/Opera direct to home: 1 - Budapest's Quarantine SoiréesWednesday, 18 March 2020
The great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau noted of 1920s Berlin that "itimes of trouble, people seek a better life in culture". But what if that culture can no longer be accessed live? Earlier this week theartsdesk brought you reports of two... Read more... |
Daniel Sepec, Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Wigmore Hall review - the viola is a starThursday, 12 March 2020
Six weeks ago, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation announced that it the winner of its prestigious and extremely valuable main annual prize for 2020 "to a composer, performer, or scholar who has made outstanding contributions to the world of... Read more... |
Joanna MacGregor, Adrian Brendel, Gildas Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - gold and silverTuesday, 25 February 2020
Startlingly high levels of expression and focused fire made this rich concert worthy of the dedicatee who radiated those qualities, Jacqueline du Pré. Beyond even that, this Wigmore Hall special was an oddly synaesthesic experience – or maybe I'm... Read more... |
Garvey, Quatuor Zaïde, Classical Vauxhall review - vibrant chamber music for allFriday, 07 February 2020
Three concerts, three fascinating venues, seven world-class young(ish) players, an audience of all ages and a musical storytelling event for 200 schoolchildren: this is how to launch a festival with outwardly modest means. Artistic Director of... Read more... |
Oriole Ensemble, Conway Hall review - sublimely peculiar chamber musicTuesday, 28 January 2020
When I reviewed the Philharmonia’s Weimar season last year I expressed a hope to hear more Hindemith performed in London. When, also last year, I reviewed chamber music at Conway Hall I looked forward to my next visit. So a Conway Hall programme... Read more... |
Highgate International Chamber Music Festival opening concert review - top soloists blend to perfectionMonday, 25 November 2019
When celebrated individuals get together to play chamber music on special occasions, the result can often turn out as what the late cellist of the Borodin Quartet, Valentin Berlinsky, disparagingly called "festival quality" – meaning a clash, rather... Read more... |
Leonskaja, Ferschtman, Várdai, Wigmore Hall review - direct line to Schubert's geniusMonday, 07 October 2019
From the epic-lyric heaven storming of Beethoven's last three piano sonatas to the lyric-epic dances on the volcano of Schubert's two late piano trios isn't so big a leap, especially when you have the clairvoyant poise between colossal and intimate... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Incontri in Terra di Siena: galloping concertos and Stravinsky by starlightSaturday, 10 August 2019
July in Tuscany and the heat is intense. Oak-forested hills offer tempting shade; pale dust flies from the roads; in the houses curtains are drawn against the ferocious sun and around irrigated gardens the mosquitos are growing plump. If you love... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dalarna: Rhinegold in a Swedish barn by a lakeSaturday, 27 July 2019
Anna Larsson's fellow Swedes can count themselves lucky that the worldwide first choice to sing Wagner's Erda and the midnight song in Mahler's Third Symphony has made so much of her Dalarna inheritance. In what's called a "Concert Barn" (... Read more... |
Ax, Keenlyside, Dover Quartet, Wigmore Hall review – celebratory SchumannWednesday, 26 June 2019
Emanuel Ax here celebrated his 70th birthday with an all-Schumann recital. In fact, it was an all-Schumann marathon, a three-hour concert at Wigmore Hall featuring solo works, Dichterliebe with Simon Keenlyside, and, with the Dover Quartet, the... Read more... |
Das Rheingold, Longborough Festival Opera review - more Wagnerian excellence in a Gloucestershire barnThursday, 06 June 2019
The whole raison d’être of the Longborough Festival was always the performance of its founder Martin Graham’s beloved Wagner. So it’s perfectly natural that the twelfth anniversary of the start of the festival’s original Ring cycle should be marked... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bartók, Bruckner, BusoniSaturday, 25 May 2019
Bartók: Complete String Quartets Quatuor Diotima (Näive)Technical infallibility is now a non-negotiable when it comes to Bartók's six fiendishly difficult string quartets. Still, there's much more to these pieces than simply hitting the right... Read more... |
