sat 20/04/2024

Lutosławski

BBC Proms: Bronfman, Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle

Champagne on ice in the private boxes; scarcely any spare seats. This isn’t the normal situation for a concert climaxing in Witold Lutosławski’s Third Symphony, a modernist work whose usual audience is more than two men and a dog but still doesn’t...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Handel, Lutosławski, Shostakovich

 Handel: The Eight Great Suites Lisa Smirnova (ECM)This set slipped out quietly at the end of 2011. The typically muted ECM cover gives no hint of how life-enhancing these two discs are; I felt like getting the fluorescent highlighters out and...

Read more...

Martin Fröst, Roland Pöntinen, Wigmore Hall

It’s tempting to say that if Martin Fröst didn’t play the clarinet then he’d be an actor or a dancer. But he is an actor and a dancer and at one point during this scintillating recital he even sang, too – whilst playing the clarinet at the same time...

Read more...

Leonidas Kavakos, Camerata Salzburg, QEH

There are many ways of being orchestral. About as many ways, in fact, as there are of organising the body politic. At one extreme there are the fascist orchestral states with their Kim Il-sung-emulating conductor-tyrants (Fritz Reiner's Chicago...

Read more...
Subscribe to Lutosławski