LSO
alexandra.coghlan
Nearly 50 years have passed since Britten’s War Requiem premiered at the consecration of the reconstructed Coventry Cathedral in May 1962. The intervening years have seen British military campaigns in the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and while the process and practice of war has changed beyond recognition, the horror that the pacifist Britten perceived so acutely remains the same. With Remembrance Sunday approaching, it would be hard to imagine a more vivid act of commemoration and testimony than the performance the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus delivered at the Barbican Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
While revered and respected, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis has never inspired audiences with the same affection as Bach’s B minor Mass, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, or even Mozart’s Coronation or C minor settings. Perhaps it’s the austerity, the monumentality of the work Beethoven knew to be his greatest that rejects the easy assimilation into secular concert life, perhaps it’s more simply the lack of big tunes to wash down all that liturgy. Furtwängler famously drew back from the work’s sacred challenges as he grew older, but Sir Colin Davis is evidently determined to keep tackling a work whose Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
There are many ways to get to the truth. One of the best ways is to ignore the truth. That seems to be the mantra of Ken Russell's colourfully mendacious portrait of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers, receiving its long-awaited DVD release. The script (by a young Melvyn Bragg) is breathless and ludicrous and yields too swiftly and too often to the hysterical - to carpet-clawing madness, glass-smashing fury and shirt-tearing lust - as it follows an improbably manic and louche Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) and his struggles to juggle the obsessive love of the women and Read more ...
graham.rickson
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 the best reason to listen to the disc is to hear a famous Czech conductor achieving miracles. And there’s an entertaining, educative DVD featuring a conductor who’s in his element when addressing an audience.Beethoven: Complete Symphonies La Chambre Philharmonique/Krivine (Naïve)
Beethoven symphonies played on modern instruments feel more and more Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It was Groundhog Day. Murray Perahia, due to play the Schumann Piano Concerto last night under Bernard Haitink, was indisposed and at the last minute Maria João Pires rushed in with Mozart 27. Just the same happened in 2006, strangely enough, with exactly the same three artists and orchestra. As you ponder that for a coincidence, what this shows is the powerful bonds that exist between musicians, between Haitink and these two pianists, whose virtues have much in common: impeccable lucidity and light-filled emotion.But it didn’t help last night’s programme at all unfortunately. For this Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
In a week in which the nation has debated the relevance of classical music, it was left to the LSO’s Eclectica concert series to have the final word. Incorporating world and electronic music alongside traditional chamber works and contemporary programmes, Eclectica’s concerts offer dressed-down, laid-back forays down the roads less travelled of the classical repertoire. With one of the 20th century’s musical greats as a grandfather and a growing reputation for his work as a producer, DJ and composer, incorporating classical music into a club idiom and setting, who better than Gabriel Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week we review Bellérophon, a rare Baroque opera from Lully which was exhumed by Christophe Rousset and performed for the first time last year, Debussy recorded live from the Barbican, and we answer the key question: how much is too much Percy Grainger? Would, for example, 19 discs be considered sufficient?Debussy: La mer, Jeux, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev (LSO Live)
If you don’t know Debussy’s 1913 tennis-inspired ballet Jeux, then start here. Performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with choreography by Nijinsky in May 1913, it flopped, and had Read more ...
David Nice
It's just been crowned the BBC Music Magazine Awards' CD of the Year. But is Valery Gergiev's second complete recording of the 20th century's greatest ballet score, captured live at the Barbican for the LSO's own label, right at the top? In my Building a Library survey for BBC Radio 3, condensed in print for the BBCMM, I suggested it might be the best in state-of-the-art sound - but not the finest overall version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. That palm went to Rozhdestvensky's much more impeccably paced old Melodiya version, in mono and dating from 1959.There's enough ravishingly beautiful Read more ...
David Nice
Heavy-goods vehicles stacked with lamentations have been thundering through the Barbican Hall. Saturday's lugubrious Rachmaninov found a mid-20th-century counterpart last night in the tough elegies of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto - apt for a dedication to those affected by the Japanese earthquake. And the tottering juggernaut of not-quite-great-but-living Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin still clogs the LSO's current season, fortunately in this case only to head a procession ending in the carnival float of what should have been Tchaikovsky's springiest symphony.Well, the Gergiev Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Sir Colin Davis's year has not been a happy one. There've been heart problems, cancellations and, during a performance of The Magic Flute at Covent Garden last month, a major fall. Last night at the Barbican Hall he faced a strenuous Beethoven programme, the Third Piano Concerto with Jonathan Biss and the Seventh Symphony, and a new work by Romanian Vlad Maistorovici. Would the 83-year old conductor have enough energy to inject proceedings with the required welly?There was as much welly as you could wish for. Understandably, he had assigned the mastery of Maistorovici's Halo to an undertsudy Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Sir Simon Rattle's intriguing return to the London Symphony Orchestra podium after years away threw up a curious thought: what happens after Berlin? The fate of six of his eight predecessors at the Berlin Phil has been death on the job. Was last night a first step to finding another way out? Were we witnessing an early bit of courtship and re-familiarisation with a possible post-Berlin playmate? It certainly had all the hallmarks of an early date between old friends, with its bouts of overenthusiastic passion and moments of awkward fumbling.But what an intense programme to kickstart a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Whether it’s consolation, stimulation, or just some old-fashioned romance you’re after this Valentine’s Day, theartsdesk’s team of writers (with a little help from a certain Bard from Stratford) have got it covered. Exhibitions to stir the heart, music to swell the soul, and comedy to help recover from both – we offer our pick of the most romantic of the arts. So from Giselle to Joe Versus the Volcano, from Barthes to the Bard, theartsdesk celebrates the many-splendoured thing that is love. Judith FlandersValentine’s Day might not seem the ideal day to give your loved one a break-up Read more ...