contemporary classical
stephen.walsh
Once upon a time writing an opera was first and foremost a question of choosing a good story. But times move on, and today – as Nicholas Till reminds us in a fascinating programme note for Philip Venables’s and Ted Huffman’s new chamber opera – the medium is the message, and the how has become at least as important as the what. Denis and Katya is a sort of dramatisation of a recent incident (as the police would call it) in Russia in which two 15-year-olds ran away from home, barricaded themselves in her stepfather’s summer retreat, and eventually – after a shoot-out with police – either Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Recent politics surround the EU and nationhood, fantasies of Irish Sea bridges and trading borders more porous than limestone have revived the granular rub between Eire and Britain, and the Celtic Tiger cool of the Nineties is a history module these days. Nevertheless the creative exchange between the two nations has a long and fruitful history – our folk traditions are conjoined twins, after all, and our contemporary musical cultures part of a continual flow back and forth.Imagining Ireland, first mounted to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising back in 2016, the year of the Brexit Read more ...
Robert Beale
Finding one piece for marimba soloist and string orchestra would tax the powers of many concert planners, never mind coming up with two, so the Northern Chamber Orchestra is to be congratulated on its first Manchester performance of 2020 – especially since they found two concerto-style works from almost the same point in recent time: 2009 and 2010. Qualify that by adding that one has a second soloist, a clarinet, but impressive nonetheless.Colin Currie was the star marimba soloist for both Stephen Barlow’s Nocturne for clarinet, marimba and strings and Kurt Schwertsik’s marimba concerto Read more ...
David Nice
It says so much for the cornucopia of London's classical music scene alone that all five of the most recent concerts I've attended have made the long list for best of 2019. I'll settle for two. The anger and violence of Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony is still resonating after the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano tore into it with focused fire on election night. Shortly before that, beauty rather than ferocity was the keynote of Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion as played in an intense Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert by Pavel Kolesniknov (don't miss his Wigmore solo Read more ...
David Nice
Culturally, "the little country that could" - as Estonia's ex-Prime Minister and historian Mart Laar dubbed it - punches well above its weight. While it educates the young with a musical instrument made available to every child, Estonia continues to shine through its musical leaders. Grand old man Arvo Pärt continues with his jewel-like craftsmanship, shining in a blissful reworking of an early piece in Zurich; and while fellow octogenarian Neeme Järvi may just have handed over his post as music director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (henceforth here ERSO, Eesti Riiklik Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that underpin his Songs of the Roma trio, to his collaborative work with musicians from across the Indian subcontinent under the ever-expanding Svara-Kanti name. Simon Thacker’s Ritmata is a back-to-basics of sorts: the first album from Thacker’s original musical ensemble, Táradh is a collection of mostly original compositions which draw inspiration from Read more ...
Chris Harvey
Ólafur Arnalds is almost secretly huge. Millions adore the melancholy beauty of the Icelandic composer’s music, yet his name still brings blank stares from some. The Royal Festival Hall was predictably full to bursting, though, to see Arnalds perform as part of his mini OPIA festival, in which he took over the auditoriums and foyers of the Southbank to showcase an eclectic mix of experimental music. Melodic piano structures and looped electronica loomed large.“Opia”, from John Koenig’s compendium of made-up words, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, means “the ambiguous intensity of looking Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Land of Kush are an ambitious 20-piece plus ensemble which features all manner of instruments from strings, horns, piano, guitar, santur, darbouka, oud and synths, as well as multiple vocalists and percussionists. Led by Sam Shalabi of the trippy Dwarfs of East Agouza, as well as numerous other Arabic-leaning Montreal ensembles, they have been fusing jazzy sounds with modern classical music, Arabic Café and distinctly experimental grooves for over a decade. Sand Enigma, however, is the band’s first album since 2013’s hymn to Cairo, The Big Mango, and again has an experimental yet distinctly Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Every ten years or so Thomas Adès writes a piano concerto and the latest had its UK premiere last night at the Royal Festival Hall, played by Kirill Gerstein and conducted by Adès himself. Following on from the youthful, skittish Concerto Conciso of 1998, and the lush, layered In Seven Days of 2008, the new piece, baldly called just Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, sees Adès engaging with the giants of 20th century piano concerto, fashioning something that simultaneously looks backwards and forwards.The concerto has lots of Adès trademarks: rhythmic complexity in the form of polyrhythms and Read more ...
Jasper Parrott
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 is all the more significant and exciting as we see politics and governments around the world set on courses which can only damage and undermine the environments in which what is best about human talent and endeavour - and especially for young people and even more for children and the very young - should be encouraged to thrive.It is sobering Read more ...
Richard Bratby
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 the public” said the composer Ruth Gipps to her biographer Jill Halstead. And sure enough, her Second Symphony – premiered by the then City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1946, and the opening item in this fascinatingly left-field programme from Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – is unmistakably the work of what Arnold Bax would have called a “brazen Romantic”.It’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
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 documentaries Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism, and now with forthcoming concerts which follow in their wake. These ares the latest chapter in a creatively restless career.In 1995 Hazelwood won the European Broadcasting Union’s conducting competition and has since performed with orchestras including the Swedish Radio Symphony, Read more ...