Rachmaninov
A Previn treasurySaturday, 02 March 2019
In a way, he was a second Bernstein. Only 11 years Lenny's junior, and living to the much riper age of 89 – his 90th birthday would have been on 6 April – André Previn was a film composer and arranger at the start of his 70-plus-year career, a jazz... Read more... |
Rachvelishvili, ROH Orchestra, Pappano, Royal Opera House review - perfect night and daySaturday, 09 February 2019
There's now something of a gala atmosphere when the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House takes to the Covent Garden stage with its music director Antonio Pappano. Admittedly some of the players are not the same as when he took up his tenure, but the... Read more... |
Lupu, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH review - concerto magical in parts, symphony stupendousMonday, 04 February 2019
Pianists most often cite Radu Lupu alongside Martha Argerich and Grigory Sokolov as the greatest. So it was hardly surprising to see so many top musicians in a packed audience, buzzing with expectation for the 73-year-old Romanian's most recent UK... Read more... |
Kempf, Devin, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - aglow but not alightSaturday, 02 February 2019
In the fourth performance of their UK tour, with Vassily Sinaisky replacing an indisposed Yuri Temirkanov, the St Petersburg Philharmonic gave a warm and rousing performance at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Prokofiev’s First Symphony – written in "... Read more... |
Two-Piano Marathon, Kings Place review - dazzling duos, deep watersMonday, 08 October 2018
You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly... Read more... |
Nikolai Lugansky / Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - lucidity and depth from two master pianistsTuesday, 01 May 2018
Reaching for philosophical terms seems appropriate enough for two deep thinkers among Russian pianists (strictly speaking, Kolesnikov is Siberian-born, London-based). In what Kant defined as the phenomenal world, the tangible circumstances, there... Read more... |
'Their DNA is forever ingrained in the keys' - Roman Rabinovich on playing composers' own pianosThursday, 09 November 2017
I was recently in the UK for some solo recitals and to make my debut with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. One of the highlights of the trip was playing a similar programme in two very different settings: first on some magnificent period... Read more... |
London Piano Festival, Kings Place review - feasts of fearless fingerworkTuesday, 10 October 2017
What has 12 hands, 18 legs, 176 keys and two page-turners? Party night at the London Piano Festival, of course. The six-pianist, two-piano marathon on Saturday evening was a high point of this delectable four-day event – though far from the only one... Read more... |
Roman Rabinovich, Hatchlands review - poetry from Chopin's very own Pleyel pianoThursday, 05 October 2017
What pianist wouldn't long to lay fingers on keyboards impregnated, as Roman Rabinovich put it in his introduction yesterday afternoon, with the DNAs of Haydn and Chopin? To take three of the 31 instruments in the astonishing Cobbe Collection at... Read more... |
Prom 63 review: Gerstein, BBCSO, Bychkov - total mastery of orchestral soundFriday, 01 September 2017
No-one, least of all the players, will forget Semyon Bychkov’s 2009 Proms appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a poleaxing interpretation of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. They had already made the history books this Proms season with a... Read more... |
Proms 37 / 38 review: Latvian Radio Choir, Gavrylyuk, BBCSSO, Dausgaard - numinous Rachmaninov triptychMonday, 14 August 2017
So it was Rachmaninov night at the Proms, but with a difference: a trinity of works sacred and profane, the first two introduced by the Latvian choir due to perform the third singing harmonised Russian Orthodox chants of the kind on which the... Read more... |
Pick of the 2017 BBC Proms: from Orthodox chant to Oklahoma!Saturday, 08 July 2017
It’s the best-looking Proms season on paper for quite a few years. That might just be a different way of saying we like it, but no-one could reproach Director David Pickard for lack of original programming or diversity (look at the whole, bigger... Read more... |
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