Dvořák
Nash Ensemble, Drapers' Hall, City of London FestivalTuesday, 05 July 2011
It takes a lot to humanise the hideous late-Victorian glitter of Drapers' Hall, but the City of London Festival's latest cornucopia knew how. Ornithologist-composer David Lumsdaine's soundscape greeted us with Australian birds fluttering invisibly... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dvořák, Rózsa, XenakisSaturday, 02 July 2011
An unreleased live recording from a much missed conductor provides heartwarming food for the soul, while another podium giant brings musicality to uncompromising Modernism, aided by a phenomenal pianist. Meanwhile, a Hungarian exile in Hollywood... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Dvořák, StraussSaturday, 18 June 2011
This week we’ve a brilliant, budget-priced box of Beethoven symphonies played on authentic instruments. It’ll remind you of how much fun there is to be had with this most iconic of composers. A historical recording of a famous cellist reappears, but... Read more... |
Rusalka, Grange Park OperaThursday, 16 June 2011
Its little-mermaid legend is enough to make the angels weep, given the bewitching gravity of Dvořák's masterpiece: a water nymph, caught between the human and supernatural worlds, condemns herself to eternal limbo for the sake of her erring princely... Read more... |
110th Anniversary Gala 2, Wigmore HallWednesday, 01 June 2011
Ghosts legendary and personal dog the nostalgic footsteps of Elgar's utterly characteristic late Piano Quintet - though who knew the old man had as much red blood in him as last night's world-class team managed to squeeze out? And circumstantial... Read more... |
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, Usher Hall, EdinburghSaturday, 26 March 2011
White-knuckle crescendos loom large in that greater-than-ever conductor Neeme Järvi's spruce Indian summer. Short-term bursts were the chief payoff in tackling Dvořák's deceptively simple-seeming Serenade for Strings with a huge department on all... Read more... |
Sir Charles Mackerras Memorial Concert, Royal Festival HallFriday, 05 November 2010
In the last year of his life he was, as a colleague noted when we learned of Charles Mackerras’s death, the wise old gamekeeper in the spring forest of Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen. No wonder Mackerras, we were told last night by his conductor... Read more... |
Tetzlaff Quartet, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 22 October 2010
Their oaky, cultured and selectively scary-wild playing seemed to cast long autumn shadows over a sparse but intent audience. This is the kind of rare programme top violinist Christian Tetzlaff, his cellist sister Tanja and friends like to work on... Read more... |
Mutter, LSO, Sir Colin Davis, BarbicanMonday, 11 October 2010
It didn't help that the London Symphony Chorus sounded rough and hectoring rather than earthily ecstatic - and I'm not sure how well they had been coached in the Czech-language mass settings. Heroic tenor Simon O'Neill, Sir Colin's last-minute... Read more... |
Kissin, LPO, Neeme Järvi, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 06 October 2010
"Well, Kissin's the star of the show," opined the fatuous gentleman who rolled in late to my row after the first piece on the programme. Possibly not, I wanted to snap back, in the light of that very fine pianist's current erratic form. But in any... Read more... |
Connolly, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bělohlávek, BarbicanSaturday, 02 October 2010
As experienced Wagnerian Jiří Bělohlávek came on to launch the BBCSO's new season in mid-air with the Tristan Prelude, I wondered whether the world's finest interpreter of Isolde's serving maid Brangäne, lustrous mezzo Sarah Connolly, was waiting to... Read more... |
The Last Night of the Proms, BBC One: The Twitter ReviewSaturday, 11 September 2010
Part 2 @bbcproms. The madness begins. Ms Derham has not switched gowns in the interval. No sign of Titchmarsh, for which we must give thanks.The "traditional" necklace of laurels for Sir Henry Wood's bust. Wonder if he'd welcome his head being... Read more... |
