composers
Notes on a no-show - Nico MuhlyTuesday, 24 March 2020
The following is adapted from a programme note for a show which was to have premiered last Thursday – the very day Sadler's Wells went dark. Nico Muhly – Drawn Lines was part of an occasional series featuring composers who are making an impact... Read more... |
Classic Albums: Tears for Fears, Songs From The Big Chair, BBC Four review - anatomy of an anthemSaturday, 15 February 2020
Roland Orzabal, co-founder and lead guitarist of Tears for Fears, laughs to himself often during this documentary — the latest in the BBC’s often-excellent, always-forensic Classic Albums series. “I agree, I agree, it sounds great,” says Orzabal. He... Read more... |
Lenny Henry's Race Through Comedy, Gold review - illuminating account of TV's struggle to become multiculturalWednesday, 16 October 2019
Sir Lenny Henry, PhD and CBE, is scarcely recognisable as the teenager who made his TV debut on New Faces in 1975. He’s been a stand-up comedian, musician and Shakespearean actor, and even wrote his own dramatised autobiography for BBC One.A... Read more... |
'A laboratory for everything': Jasper Parrott on the future of his classical music agencySaturday, 05 October 2019
Fiftieth anniversary? It seems incredible but also so exhilarating not least because these times we live in now seem to me to be a golden age for music of all kinds and in particular for what we label so inadequately classical music. This flowering... Read more... |
Balsom, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - made in BrumThursday, 03 October 2019
There’s nothing like practising what you preach. “I say straight out that I regard all so-called 12-tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music as utter rubbish, and indeed a deliberate conning of... Read more... |
10 Questions for conductor Charles HazlewoodMonday, 23 September 2019
Charles Hazlewood (b. 1966) has worked across the gamut of orchestral music, his career showcasing the multitude of ways it can be perceived and enjoyed. Recently he has reengaged with his longstanding love of minimalist music, first via his two BBC... Read more... |
Preludes, Southwark Playhouse review - journeying into the mind of RachmaninoffThursday, 12 September 2019
Where does music come from? That’s the vital question posed to Sergei Rachmaninoff in Dave Malloy’s extraordinary 2015 chamber work, as the great late-Romantic Russian composer – stuck in his third year of harrowing writer’s block – tries to... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Sibelius, Thomas WilsonSaturday, 27 July 2019
Brahms: The Piano Quartets The Primrose Piano Quartet (Meridian)Schoenberg complained that performances of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet never pleased him (“the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings”).... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dove, Leighton, Martin, Vaughan WilliamsSaturday, 06 July 2019
The Orchestral Music of Jonathan Dove BBC Philharmonic/Timothy Redmond, with Lawrence Zazzo (counter-tenor) (Orchid Classics)Jonathan Dove’s Airport Scenes could be subtitled Four Air Interludes, each movement extracted from his Glyndebourne... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Daniel Elms, Hindemith, TchaikovskySaturday, 15 June 2019
Daniel Elms: Islandia (New Amsterdam Records)Composers have long taken inspiration from landscape, and much of Daniel Elms’ absorbing Islandia is rooted in the ambience, sights and sounds of his home city, Hull. If you’ve not been there, book... 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... |
First Person: Conductor Maxime Pascal on Stockhausen at the Southbank CentreTuesday, 21 May 2019
Stockhausen stands alongside Monteverdi and Beethoven as a composer who exploded the understanding of his art. Stockhausen deeply changed the relationship between space, time and music; there’s a human, intimate dimension to his composition, and he... Read more... |
