Schubert
Lang Lang, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 18 May 2011
There must be at least 100 more interesting pianists in the concert world than Lang Lang, but perhaps he is just the best publicist around, because nothing else can explain why such a vacuous display as he gave last night at the Royal Festival Hall... Read more... |
Alexander Melnikov, Wigmore HallTuesday, 26 April 2011
How important is it to hear “the composer’s intentions” at a concert? Maybe only the interpreter’s intentions are possible. The young Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov challenges the golden rule of faithfulness to source with the resources of today... Read more... |
Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Uchida, QEHMonday, 28 March 2011
There is always a moment after you've mauled a musician in review when guilt bubbles to the surface. Your inner nursery school teacher (the little voice that thinks potato prints deserve Nobel Prizes) starts tugging at your conscience. This spell of... Read more... |
Paul Lewis, Wigmore HallWednesday, 23 March 2011
Paul Lewis doesn't smile much. He came to the keyboard last night with his face tuned to his usual blank-to-grim setting for the first recital in his Schubert cycle at the Wigmore Hall: a serious man with serious business. If only I could take his... Read more... |
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Queen Elizabeth HallMonday, 21 February 2011
Anything anyone else can do, we can do better, seemed the mantra last night. It's probably a bit churlish to accuse the finest orchestra in the world of arrogance - surely that's their job? But the first night of the Berlin Philharmonic's four-... Read more... |
Leonidas Kavakos, Enrico Pace, Wigmore HallMonday, 17 January 2011
No doubt about it, Leonidas Kavakos is one of the world's top 10 live-wire violinists. But here in London he seems to have sold himself a bit short recently with a less than great concerto repertoire (Korngold, Szymanowski's Second). Korngold... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Pianist Elisabeth LeonskajaSaturday, 04 December 2010
Born in 1945 to Russian parents in Tbilisi, Georgia, Elisabeth Leonskaja gave her first major recital at the age of 11 and went on to study at the Moscow Conservatory, emigrating from the Soviet Union to Vienna in 1978 and making a sensational... Read more... |
100 Years of German Song, 1810-1910, Schade, Martineau, Wigmore HallWednesday, 20 October 2010
As we take in news of the cuts that the arts will have to absorb, and wait for the Cassandras to start hollering, it's important to remind ourselves of one arts venue that won't be wiping one bead of sweat off its brow as a result of today's... Read more... |
Röschmann, Collins, BBCPO, Noseda, Royal Albert HallThursday, 09 September 2010
Maybe it's a truism that most instrumental music, at least before World War One, aspires to the condition of song. Few have gone farther in that respect than the composers of the three purely orchestral works in last night's Prom. Add to the mix a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: Musicians Peak in the AlpsSunday, 01 August 2010
You want to see Yuri Bashmet, arguably the greatest living viola player, but you can't because you've chosen to go to a recital by Yevgeny Kissin, one of the world's top pianists, on the same evening in another hall. Even the option of dashing from... Read more... |
Performing Die Schöne MüllerinThursday, 22 July 2010
Few great works of art are as disarming as Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. With its folksong-like melodies and deceptively simple harmonic palate, it is quite hard to account for the cycle’s profound emotional effect. How is it that over the course... Read more... |
Ivana Gavrić, Wigmore HallThursday, 15 July 2010
There are some recitals where you think only about the abstracted music - the harmonic arguments, the structural cleverness, the textural ingenuity - and there are others where you are forced to confront the presence of a set of living,... Read more... |
