conductors
Bavarian State Orchestra, Kirill Petrenko, Barbican review - Mahler's Seventh as dance suiteSaturday, 02 June 2018Serendipity as well as luxury saw to it that the night after Simon Rattle gave his farewell Festival Hall performance as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, his imminent successor appeared over at the Barbican with another excellent German... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Méhul, Mozart, SchubertSaturday, 05 May 2018Beethoven: Symphony No 3, Méhul: Symphony No 1 Solistes Européens Luxembourg/Christoph König (Rubicon)Étienne-Nicolas Méhul was one of revolutionary France’s key musicans. He was commissioned by Napoleon to write his Chant national du 14... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Hans Abrahamsen, Lully, Strauss, Duo JatekokSaturday, 21 April 2018Hans Abrahamsen String Quartets No. 1-4 Arditti String Quartet (Winter & Winter)The opening section of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s 2012 String Quartet No. 4 is subtitled “light and airy”, and, aptly, the four strings produce extraordinary... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Lucerne Easter Festival: Haitink, Schiff and an alternative PassionFriday, 30 March 2018Anyone passionate about great conducting would jump at the chance to hear 89-year-old Bernard Haitink giving three days of masterclasses with eight young practitioners of the art, his eighth and possibly last series in Lucerne (though he's not... Read more... |
Martín, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - farewell to the best of chief conductorsSaturday, 24 March 2018The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s final season concert conducted by Robin Ticciati, who leaves his post as chief conductor of the SCO for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, was bound to be an emotional occasion. Spanning a decade, the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Hindemith, Cantelli, Karajan, Peabody Cello GangSaturday, 10 March 2018Hindemith: 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... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Germany - Baltic mastery in Berlin and LeipzigWednesday, 28 February 2018Punching well above their weights, population-wise, on the international music scene, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are celebrating, and being celebrated, in style over the year of their 100th birthdays. Berlin has just finished a 10-day "Festival... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Orchestra RehearsalTuesday, 27 February 2018Made for Italian state television in 1978, Fellini’s Orchestral Rehearsal is full of clichés. Some of them do ring true: brass players and percussionists are often a mischievous, rowdy bunch. As for the others… I’d best stop there, lest I annoy any... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Katowice - energy and imagination at the Fitelberg Conducting CompetitionTuesday, 28 November 2017Music competitions are big in Poland. Every five years the classical music world turns its attention to Warsaw for the International Chopin Piano Competition, with much commentary and speculation, and a succession celebrity laureated to maintain its... Read more... |
Santtu-Matias Rouvali on conducting in Gothenburg - 'they just want to make music. No bullshit'Sunday, 01 October 2017Sweden's ackowledged "National Orchestra", the Gothenburg Symphony, left its Chief Conductor post unfilled for four seasons, but now it's finally certain to have let the right one in. Having enjoyed a golden age in the (largely unsung) highest... Read more... |
Podium nitrate: Conductors at the 2017 PromsMonday, 11 September 2017What do conductors actually do? It's a question that concert-goers, as well as listeners and viewers of the BBC Proms, often ponder. Conductors may not make a sound, but what they certainly do is put on a performance, the minutiae of which are... Read more... |
Prom 70 review: Denk, BBCSO, Canellakis - high, lucid and brightWednesday, 06 September 2017It can’t be too long before “women” no longer needs to prefix “conductors” to define what’s still a rare breed. Yet seven at the Proms is certainly an improvement, with many more coming up through the ranks. And American Karina Canellakis turned out... Read more... |