LSO
Classical CDs Weekly: Rachmaninov, Strauss, Sir John BarbirolliSaturday, 13 April 2013
Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4, Paganini Rhapsody Valentina Lisitsa, London Symphony Orchestra/Michael Francis (Decca)Read the press notes before listening to this double CD and you’d be forgiven for feeling some trepidation; Valentina... Read more... |
Pires, LSO, Haitink, Barbican HallWednesday, 13 February 2013
It’s not that Bernard Haitink’s tempos are universally slow, it’s just that they often feel that way. When it works the music can be magisterial, immense, but when it doesn’t you find yourself chafing against such unyielding allegiance to restraint... Read more... |
Spassov, LSO, Järvi, Barbican HallFriday, 01 February 2013
The tabloids are getting shriller every day in their warnings about the army of Bulgarians and Romanians about to descend on British shores, so it’s probably lucky that none of their journalists was present last night at the Barbican to witness an... Read more... |
LSO, St Lawrence String Quartet, Adams, BarbicanMonday, 28 January 2013
And so John Adams’s residency with the London Symphony Orchestra reaches its finale – a brisk allegro of a concert with a cheeky coda in the form of the composer’s latest orchestral work, Absolute Jest. One of contemporary music’s most articulate... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Joby Talbot, American MavericksSaturday, 26 January 2013
Mahler: Symphonies 1-9 London Symphony Orchestra/Valery Gergiev (LSO Live)Buying a set of Mahler symphonies used to mean blowing one’s annual record budget in one swoop. You can now buy cycles by the likes of Bernstein and Tennstedt for less than £... Read more... |
St Lawrence String Quartet, LSO String Orchestra, Adams, LSO St Luke'sThursday, 24 January 2013
“It looks like the Coconut Lounge,” remarked John Adams as he stepped up jauntily to introduce the first of two big string pieces composed 30 years apart. The folk with their drinks at the candlelit tables, though, were never allowed to sit back and... Read more... |
Barbican and Southbank 2013-14 seasons: still neck and neckTuesday, 22 January 2013
With the cuts still to bite deep, it's enterprising business as usual for both of London’s biggest concert-hall complexes and their satellite orchestras in the newly announced season to come. I use the word "complex" carefully, because as from... Read more... |
Upshaw, London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 18 January 2013
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that... Read more... |
Kavakos, Matsuev, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, BarbicanThursday, 20 December 2012
Valery Gergiev’s exploration of the music of Karol Szymanowski is one of the most vitalising series mounted at the Barbican in recent years - to compare, say, with Sir Colin Davis’s Sibelius and Berlioz, Michael Tilson Thomas’s tributes to Leonard... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallWednesday, 19 December 2012
Valery Gergiev is a human dynamo. Even before embarking on the latest tranche of his (slightly curious) pairing of Szymanowski and Brahms with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been principal conductor since 2007, at the Barbican, the... Read more... |
Vengerov, London Symphony Orchestra, Ticciati, Barbican HallThursday, 06 December 2012
Her Majesty was making a rare concert-hall appearance to present the Queen’s Medal for Music, and any little Englanders in the audience might have been tempted to link royalty to Elgar’s Enigma Variations. But conductor Robin Ticciati, with a... Read more... |
Kavakos, London Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov, Barbican HallMonday, 26 November 2012
Leonidas Kavakos was originally meant to be premiering a concerto by Argentinian composer Oswaldo Golijov, which had also been scheduled for Berlin in 2011 and subsequently for Los Angeles in May this year. The composer missed both those deadlines... Read more... |
