contemporary classical
Violet, Music Theatre Wales/Britten-Pears Arts review - well sung and played, but to what end?Friday, 24 June 2022
Best new opera in years, they said – don’t ask who – after the Aldeburgh Festival premiere of Tom Coult’s Violet. I’d have been happy in Hackney had it been as good as, say, Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis or Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside. Alas,... Read more... |
First Person: Christina McMaster - seeking musical cures for modern malaiseSaturday, 28 May 2022
In 2020, during a gentle easing of lockdown restrictions, I was asked to play for the Culture Clinic sessions at Kings Place, a creative initiative where small groups of up to six people could book a ticket for a private, personally tailored... Read more... |
Six Brandenburgs: Six Commissions, Chamber Domaine, Malling Abbey review - metaphysical brillianceMonday, 25 April 2022
"Contemporary classical", for want of a better term, works best in concert as a cornucopia of shortish new works offering a healthy range of styles and voices. Add to the mix six of the most exhilarating and original chamber concertos ever, by no... Read more... |
Ennio review - sprawling biog of the maestro of movie musicThursday, 21 April 2022
Ennio Morricone’s collaboration with director Giuseppe Tornatore on 1988’s Cinema Paradiso was one of the countless highlights of his career, and it’s Tornatore who has masterminded this sprawling documentary tribute to the composer, who died in... Read more... |
Bournemouth SO, Karabits, Lighthouse, Poole review - more voices from the eastTuesday, 12 April 2022
The last of this season’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert series Voices from the East featured music from Azerbaijan with Kirill Karabits focusing on works by the contemporary composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and her teacher Kara Karayev.Born in... Read more... |
‘Let me be your main course’: composer Jimmy López on why new music needs time and spaceTuesday, 22 February 2022
No, not your aperitif – and certainly not your digestif; your bona fide main dish, the one your audience yearns for, dresses up for, and looks forward to.It’s 2022; time for arts leaders to show the way into the future and to not underestimate the... Read more... |
Clements Prize, Conway Hall review - newly-written string trios in competitionMonday, 18 October 2021
The Conway Hall in London has hosted chamber music concerts since it was built in 1929, and for 40 years this included a composition prize, in abeyance since the late 1970s. This has now been revived by the hall’s enterprising director of music,... Read more... |
Album: Vangelis - Juno to JupiterFriday, 01 October 2021
Along with Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis is a key figure in the development of - to be loosely colloquial about it – trance and chill-out electronica. His 1970s work was proggy trip music, laced with classical aspirations that... Read more... |
Carnac, BCMG, Kemp, Music@Malling Festival - lyrical Turnage frames abstruse fanciesTuesday, 28 September 2021
Is there any composer alive who writes more luminously bittersweet elegies than Mark-Anthony Turnage? Taking key lines from memorialising poets through the ages as inspiration, he knows that instrumental phrases must sing, sometimes to invisible... Read more... |
Aimard, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Benjamin, BBC Proms review - a revealing composer portraitTuesday, 31 August 2021
Composer George Benjamin has dazzling talent, but he is difficult to showcase. He is not a naturally extrovert type, and most of his projects take years to formulate, and only come about through collaboration with close and trusted performers. But... Read more... |
Baker, Chineke! Orchestra, Eddins, Edinburgh International Festival review - women's stories told by womenThursday, 19 August 2021
The Edinburgh International Festival has returned this year, with a programme of socially distanced events held almost completely outdoors. Yup, that’s right. Outdoors. In Scotland. (Top tip: if you’re going to one of the 8pm concerts, wear a winter... Read more... |
Psappha, Phillips, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester online review - Turnage world premiereFriday, 30 April 2021
Manchester’s Psappha have been proudly flying the flag of new and radical music right through the year of lockdown, and last night’s livestream, with two-and-a-half world premieres, one of them by Mark-Anthony Turnage, showed they haven’t given up... Read more... |
