Dvořák
Schubert Ensemble, Kings Place review - spot-on introductions, dazzling performancesFriday, 10 November 2017
To demonstrate what makes chamber masterpieces tick and then to play them, brilliantly, is a sequence which ought to happen more often. Perhaps too many musicians think their eloquence is confined to their instruments. Not violinist Simon Blendis... Read more... |
Uchida, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - Berlioz steals the showFriday, 13 October 2017
"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full). "Dvořák Symphony No. 8... Read more... |
Prom 70 review: Denk, BBCSO, Canellakis - high, lucid and brightWednesday, 06 September 2017
It 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... |
Proms at... & Prom 56 reviews: Multi-Story Orchestra / BBCSO, Hrůša - the best of all possible worldsMonday, 28 August 2017
There we had it, in one extraordinary Proms day: the brave new world of contemporary classical music for all in a repurposed Peckham car park followed by the consolidation of the old order in all-Czech programming of remarkable originality and... Read more... |
'You are my hero, dear Jiří': Karita Mattila and others remember Jiří BělohlávekWednesday, 07 June 2017
The first of Jiří Bělohlávek’s final three appearances in London, conducting his Czech Philharmonic in a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa, came as a shock. The trademark grey curly hair had vanished. Clearly he had undergone chemotherapy, but... Read more... |
Dvořák Requiem, BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Bělohlávek, BarbicanFriday, 14 April 2017
Not your usual blockbuster for Holy Week, this. In other words, neither of the Bach Passions but a Requiem, and not – these days, at any rate – one of the more often-performed ones (it's not among the 79 works listed in The BBC Proms Guide... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Jakub HrůšaSaturday, 04 February 2017
Only four flutes were on stage at the start of Jakub Hrůša’s latest concert with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the reins of which he took over from Jonathan Nott last September. Charles Ives would have been amazed to hear his “Voices of Druids” on... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the D-Marin Festival: Turkish poetry in music, Bach at sunriseTuesday, 06 September 2016
Istanbul six weeks before the failed coup, the south-west coast of Turkey six weeks after: what's the difference? None that I could see; once past the Turkish Airlines flights, with literature and screen full of the "People's Victory", there was no... Read more... |
Prom 25: Gerhardt, Komlósi, Relyea, RPO, DutoitThursday, 04 August 2016
"Let the song speak, I pray," exhorts the Bard in the Prologue to Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, "Listen in silence." This was a night for leaning in and listening closely, despite the large forces arrayed on stage for Dvořák’s Cello Concerto and Bartók’s... Read more... |
Cottier Chamber Project 2016, GlasgowSaturday, 18 June 2016
It should have been a complete disaster. Not announcing your festival’s programme until barely a week before it started ought to have guaranteed that nobody knew about it – no press, no audiences, other plans made, other things booked.But still they... Read more... |
St Ludmila, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterMonday, 23 May 2016
The Victorians liked their oratorios long and loud (most of the time), and when Dvořák wrote St Ludmila for the Leeds Festival of 1886 he got the style exactly right. Sir Mark Elder brought his and the Hallé’s celebration of Dvořák to a thunderous... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Sir Mark Elder on DvořákSunday, 01 May 2016
This May the Hallé is celebrating Dvořák. The orchestra’s music director Sir Mark Elder has previously mounted a festival of the Czech composer’s work in Chicago, but now brings him home to Manchester. Nature, Life and Love features seven concerts... Read more... |
