Philharmonia
Smith, Wyn-Rogers, Philharmonia, Pons, RFHMonday, 17 October 2016
The Philharmonia’s Sunday concert wasn’t quite the event they’d planned. Christoph von Dohnányi scored a hit last season with Schubert's Ninth Symphony, so his reading of the Eighth seemed an ideal way to begin. But Dohnányi withdrew early on,... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 5, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHFriday, 30 September 2016
The Symphony of Psalms, which ended the Philharmonia’s Stravinsky series last night, is an indelible masterpiece, silencing the tired but persistent accusation that Stravinsky’s music is clever but cold. Abstract it may be, but suffused with an... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 4, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHMonday, 26 September 2016
Stravinsky's music, chameleonic yet always itself, offers so many lines of thought. One struck me immediately with the descending, even harp notes and tender, veiled strings at the start of his 1947 ballet Orpheus last night: the inexorable beat of... Read more... |
The Kingdom, Three Choirs Festival, GloucesterTuesday, 26 July 2016
The last time but one that the Three Choirs Festival was in Gloucester the main offering was Elgar’s oratorio The Kingdom, and there’s a kind of inevitability about the same work turning up again, same place, same occasion, six years later. After... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths & Rituals, Philharmonia, Salonen, St John’s Smith SquareFriday, 03 June 2016
I had been looking forward to last night's concert since it was first announced over a year ago. For a Stravinsky nut the chance to hear pieces whose live performances are vanishingly rare was not one to be missed. And it turns out there are enough... Read more... |
Van de Wiel, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFHFriday, 20 May 2016
“Choleric humour, pathos and kindliness are mingled in conflict," wrote Robert Simpson of Nielsen’s 1928 Clarinet Concerto. The work was written for a player with a complex character, full of contradictions. Last night’s soloist, Mark van de Wiel,... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths & Rituals, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHMonday, 16 May 2016
Looking past the ballets for Diaghilev, there are still many superb scores by Stravinsky honoured more in scholarship than performance. In Myths and Rituals, the Philharmonia addresses that lack of wider appreciation with five concerts from May to... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Elgar, Ives, Reich, WaltonSaturday, 09 April 2016
Elgar & Walton Cello Concertos Steven Isserlis (cello), Philharmonia Orchestra/Paavo Järvi (Hyperion)Anyone fearing that their Elgarian mojo might be waning should immediately obtain the BFI’s new remastering of Ken Russell’s glorious early... Read more... |
Mahler 3, Fink, Philharmonia, Hrůša, RFHFriday, 12 February 2016
"It’s all very well, but you can’t call it a symphony". So said William Walton of Mahler’s Third, all six movements and a hundred minutes of it. Jakub Hrůša conducted the Philharmonia last night on fine if hardly infallible form in a performance... Read more... |
Van de Wiel, Philharmonia, Wilson, RFHMonday, 25 January 2016
Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, premiered in 1909, is from perhaps the last era in which pieces readily found favour with both critics and audiences alike. It launched Vaughan Williams’s reputation as a major national figure at the age of 38, and... Read more... |
Hardenberger, Philharmonia, Nelsons, RFHMonday, 07 December 2015
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Nobody knows de trouble I see is a popular concerto, but it’s an unlikely hit. Zimmermann maintains a distanced relationship with the spiritual on which the work is based, and, while there are jazz elements too, this is a... Read more... |
Coles, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFHFriday, 20 November 2015
Great Estonian Neeme Järvi’s two conducting sons have had varying success in London this week. Kristjan did what he could with a dog’s dinner of a Britten Sinfonia programme on Wednesday night, while older brother Paavo presumably chose the three... Read more... |
