LPO
Boyd Tonkin
Even in the 21st century, it may not take that long for an outlandish literary experiment to jump genres and become an established musical classic. In 2008, I enthusiastically reviewed a strange, poetic, almost Beckett-like novella by the writer and music critic Paul Griffiths.His let me tell you reconfigures the 483 words that the hapless Ophelia speaks in Hamlet into a haunting, melancholy first-person testament of love, sorrow and (in Griffiths’s version, if not Shakespeare’s) dogged survival. Five years later, the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen brilliantly embraced the intrinsic Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Water surged through this Prom from first spray to last drop. But there was nothing damp or diluted about Edward Gardner’s helmsmanship as he steered the London Philharmonic Orchestra through a succession of liquid rhapsodies: three from the early 20th century; one from 1993.Aigul Akhmetshina, the star mezzo (and ubiquitous Carmen) who sang in Ravel’s Shéhérazade song-cycle, went with the flow herself in a notably collegiate performance that impressively blended her own sumptuous instrument with the lush orchestration around the vocal line. On paper, this looked like an almost overloaded Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
From the animatronic cat on the bar of the Garter Inn to the rowers’ crew who haul their craft across the stage and the military ranks of “Dig for Victory” cabbages arrayed in Ford’s garden, all the period flourishes that helped make Richard Jones’s Falstaff such an audience hit twice before at Glyndebourne look as spruce and smart as ever in this revival.However, the opera does not belong to any director, however imaginative, nor even to his ever-ingenious designer Ultz – but to Verdi, his inspirational librettist Boito, and the singers and players who truly possess the power to restore this Read more ...
David Nice
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions and the “wonder-working spear” is a knife in a Cain and Abel story superimposed on Wagner’s myth (as if that wasn’t complicated enough). Kundry, whom the composer defines as literally flying between “good” and “bad” worlds, enters primly in the first two acts bearing a tea-tray.Strong tableaux abound in young Dutch director Jetske Mijnssen’s production, Glyndebourne's first Parsifal, but they restrict to this world Wagner's sublime swansong score, Read more ...
David Nice
Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’s Faust finale. You’d think no visuals could match the auditory phantasmagoria, just as dance, music and design flunked the essence of Paradiso in the Royal Ballet’s The Dante Project. Mahler does compose a kind of concert opera in Part Two, though; sound, movement and image accorded well.The Southbank Centre has splashed out on its sound-and-vision Multitudes festival, which here meant further expense in a work that already calls for a large Read more ...
graham.rickson
Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès (LPO)Here are three orchestral suites taken from stage works by Thomas Adès, from different stages of his career, captured at live performances at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2018 and 2023. So not new recordings, but good to have these in one place to trace the composer’s career from prodigious breakthrough to acknowledged master. I have not always been convinced by Adès as a conductor when I’ve seen him live – he seems a bit hyperactive and prone to micromanagement – but judging just aurally by the results Read more ...
David Nice
When Vladimir Jurowski returns to what used to be “his” London Philharmonic Orchestra, you’d better jump. I would have done on Wednesday had I been able to get to his heady mix of Russian and Ukrainian rarities; luckily I could on Saturday night, because an outwardly standard programme of early 19th century works proved perfect, raising Schumann’s much-denigrated Violin Concerto to the level of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony.Vilde Frang (pictured below) was the ideal match for Jurowski and the LPO here. Her double-stopping entry, startlingly resonant, Read more ...
David Nice
When Vladimir Jurowski planned this typically unorthodox programme, he could not have known that a disaster even greater, long-term, than 9/11 was going to befall the USA two days after the concert. There is no bad time for a tricky commemoration of the World Trade Center attacks, but close to a presidential inauguration would have been right whatever the outcome. As for an 18th century “Mass in Time of War”, clearly Ukraine and Gaza would still be on the agenda.Come the event, and neither of the main works on the programme quite stirred the soul: absolutely no fault of Jurowski’s meticulous Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ravel: The Complete Works with Piano François-Xavier Poizat, Philharmonia/Simone Menezes et al(Aparté)Ravel was by no means a prolific composer but, including absolutely everything in his catalogue that includes piano, François-Xavier Poizat’s collection stretches to six CDs. Even as someone pretty familiar with Ravel there was lots here I was finding for the first time, alongside much-loved favourites like Le Tombeau de Couperin and Valses Nobles et Sentimentales.Lots of Ravel’s orchestral pieces (including the two just mentioned) started out as piano pieces which he later orchestrated Read more ...
David Nice
If there was ever a time for the inevitable "Rach Three” (piano concerto, not symphony) in the composer’s 150th anniversary year – and I confess I dodged other occasions – it might as well have come in the fresh and racy shape of Leif Ove Andsnes' interpretation and the equally alert, forward-moving playing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under a kindred spirit, its principal conductor Edward Gardner.In short, there was no slack either in the concerto or an even greater masterpiece, the Choral Symphony The Bells, and yet no lack of emotional intensity either. Andsnes is usually Read more ...
David Nice
If you ever doubted that Bizet’s Carmen, 150 years young next year, is one of the greatest operas of all time, this performance would have changed your mind. Among the four principals only Rihab Chaieb’s utterly convincing, consistent protagonist was the same as on first night 22 performances ago, and as ringleader we had the vivacious conductor of the second run, Anja Bihlmaier.It was Glyndebourne music director Robin Ticciati who launched the latest Glyndebourne Carmen, and Bihlmaier seemed to share much of his fast-moving panache. But she also had her own way with some of the surprising Read more ...
David Nice
Not everyone knew what to expect from this fascinating programme. Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, last of his orchestral masterpieces, is nothing like the more familiar aspects of his piano concertos. Nor is Busoni’s nominal attempt at the form, which seems more of a Symphony-Concerto than anything else, and style-wise impossible to pin down. Both works had the fullest care and focus last night.It felt counter-intuitive to have Rachmaninov's very personal swansong in the first half; if some of us couldn't quite tune in to the depths at first, that was no fault of the performance. Edward Read more ...