contemporary classical
Singcircle, Barbican review - veteran ensemble bids farewell with StockhausenTuesday, 21 November 2017
STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Singcircle has been... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Howells, Karayev, LotichiusSaturday, 18 November 2017
Herbert Howells: Music for Clavichord Julian Perkins (Prima Facie)Herbert Howells was at a low ebb in the 1920s. His energies were sapped by ongoing health issues and resultant medical treatment. A severe creative crisis followed the disastrous... Read more... |
Hugo Ticciati, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Cathedral review - spirituality, no spooksThursday, 02 November 2017
Manchester Camerata chose All Hallows’ Eve for a concert of (in some part) "holy" minimalism. Arvo Pärt’s Silouan’s Song began it, and his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten ended it. They headlined it "Spiritualism and Minimalism", but I think... Read more... |
The Consul, Guildhall School review - blowsy melodrama rooted by committed studentsTuesday, 31 October 2017
Fancy that: the day after the last major Menotti staging I can remember in the UK, The Medium at the Edinburgh Festival, "splendid piece of post-Puccinian grand guignol" turned up in two different reviews (moral: don't discuss the performance with... Read more... |
Ensemble InterContemporain, Pintscher, RFH review - a visit from the gentle ghost of BoulezTuesday, 17 October 2017
The Royal Festival Hall rather belied its name for a visit to London on Saturday of France’s premier new-music ensemble. It can’t be helped that the more intimate space of the Queen Elizabeth Hall next door is presently closed for renovation, but... Read more... |
Prom 16 review: Osborne, BBCSSO, Volkov - scintillating piano concerto premiereThursday, 27 July 2017
Expectations ran high for this first performance of Julian Anderson’s piano concerto, and they weren’t disappointed. Taking its title from a book of the same name by Andre Malraux, The Imaginary Museum goes on a journey around the world over the... Read more... |
Ensemble InterContemporain, Wigmore HallWednesday, 21 June 2017
The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall. They are known as new music specialists – the group was founded by Pierre Boulez as the house band for the IRCAM electronic music studio – so Ravel and... Read more... |
Britten Sinfonia, Adès, BarbicanWednesday, 07 June 2017
Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia here reached the most revolutionary works in their twin portrait season of Gerald Barry and Beethoven: Barry’s Chevaux-de-frise and Beethoven’s "Eroica". Adès, ever-keen to play the iconoclast, emphasised all the... Read more... |
Britten Sinfonia, Adès, Milton CourtWednesday, 31 May 2017
Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia are embarking on a three-year project, coupling the symphonies of Beethoven with works by contemporary Irish composer Gerald Barry. Adès is keen to highlight the radical vision of the two composers, so expect... Read more... |
Y Tŵr, MTW, Sherman Theatre, CardiffSaturday, 20 May 2017
Until yesterday my only experience of the Welsh language in the opera house was a few isolated passages in Iain Bell’s In Parenthesis last year and the surtitles WNO routinely put up alongside the English in the Millennium Centre. Now Guto Puw, a 46... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Joubert, Mahler, Simon Thacker & Justyna JablonskaSaturday, 20 May 2017
John Joubert: Jane Eyre April Frederick, David Stout, English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Somm)This is the second Brontë opera to have come my way in the past year; Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights is now joined by this involving adaptation... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Tectonics Glasgow 2017Tuesday, 09 May 2017
Has Glasgow’s Tectonics weekend turned away from its wilder excess? Has it, in its fifth outing, even – well, grown up and got serious? That was partly the sense from the opening day of conductor Ilan Volkov’s visionary mix of contemporary classical... Read more... |
