OAE
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... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Britten, Mahler, Arvo PärtSaturday, 17 November 2012
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, Saint Nicolas Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Holst Singers, City of London Sinfonia/Stephen Layton (Hyperion)2013 will be Britten’s centenary, so brace yourself for an onslaught of new and reissued... Read more... |
Montgomery, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 26 October 2012
It’s a sadness to all lovers of the French horn that Mozart’s four horn concertos, the product of his longest friendship, make their appearance all too rarely in the concert hall. Though the building blocks of the repertoire, perhaps their apparent... Read more... |
Ibragimova, Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, Gardner, Mansion HouseFriday, 29 June 2012
For the general public, getting to see the Mansion House in the City of London is almost as easy a task as becoming a dentist who specialises in hen’s teeth. But that was not the only reason for coming along to last night’s Orchestra of the Age of... Read more... |
Aimard, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Festival HallMonday, 11 June 2012
The repertoire of the OAE is creeping away from the 18th century and into the 20th with such unashamed eagerness, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see them throwing up an urtext edition of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a few seasons. Last... Read more... |
Rattle rolls up for The Night ShiftFriday, 25 May 2012Sir Simon Rattle has a reputation as one of classical music's most persuasive talkers. Only not with a baton in his hand. His skills as both a verbal and musical communicator will be simultaneously on view for the first time next month when he makes... Read more... |
Roméo et Juliette: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Elder, Royal Festival HallSunday, 19 February 2012
It's one of the fundamental rules of concert-going that in any given season there will be one piece that trips you up. And that piece will always be by Berlioz. No matter what new alchemical concoctions Boulez, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough or Rihm will... Read more... |
Symphony, BBC FourFriday, 04 November 2011
Having blazed a trail through choral music, Simon Russell Beale now focuses his attentions on the symphony in this new four-part series. At last able to put aside the mind-games and chicanery of his role as Home Secretary William Towers in Spooks (... Read more... |
Die Entführung aus dem Serail, OAE, Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 24 November 2010
A problem child in any number of ways, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail doesn’t always get the professional attention it deserves, certainly not from London companies. The opera’s last outing at the Royal Opera House dates back almost a decade... 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... |
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Albert HallMonday, 02 August 2010
In 1860 Wagner sent a full score of his recently published Tristan und Isolde to Berlioz, inscribing it: “To the great and dear composer of Roméo et Juliette, from the grateful composer of Tristan und Isolde.” The bonds between these two works go... Read more... |
OAE, Ivan Fischer, QEHFriday, 05 March 2010
If Beethoven’s Third Symphony Eroica was the seismic upheaval, not just for Beethoven but for the entire symphonic movement, then the Second Symphony was most certainly the pre-shock. And we can be precise about the moment that Beethoven blows the... Read more... |
