Schumann
theartsdesk at the Rosendal Festival: Schubert above a fjordWednesday, 24 August 2016
More than just a great and serious pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes is a Mensch. His special gift in recent years has been to bring young musicians just establishing their careers together with star players like himself in beautiful and/or interesting... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival: Boulez celebration, Andreas Ottensamer, Stephen HoughFriday, 19 August 2016
Remarkably, Pierre Boulez made his first appearance at the Edinburgh International Festival way back in 1948, at only the Festival’s second ever outing, in charge of music for director Jean-Louis Barrault’s production of Hamlet. He remained a... Read more... |
East Neuk Festival 2016Friday, 08 July 2016
All the best festivals develop organically, with a guiding hand from the best directors. When I first came to the East Neuk Festival two years ago, on its 10th anniversary, it was already a special case, thriving on the spirit of place and including... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Reykjavík: Nocturnes for MidsummerSunday, 26 June 2016
After a grey start, there was a spectacular sunset around midnight on the second of my two days in Reykjavik. It's what brings one of Iceland's most brilliant younger-generation talents, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson (and yes, he's worked with Björk),... Read more... |
Matthias Goerne, Daniil Trifonov, Wigmore HallThursday, 09 June 2016
If you needed further proof of the intelligence, the thoughtfulness of Daniil Trifonov’s musicianship, the programme for his four-concert residency at the Wigmore Hall would go a long way towards providing it. How many young soloists of Trifonov’s... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Krenek, Schumann, OsmosisSaturday, 23 April 2016
Krenek: Piano Concertos 1-3 Mikhail Korzhev (piano), English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Toccata Classics)Ernst Krenek? If he's remembered at all, it's for his jazzy Weimar Republic opera Johnny spielt auf. This was an international hit after... Read more... |
Scenes from Faust, LSO, Harding, BarbicanMonday, 21 March 2016
Some of us have waited years for this. The opportunity to see Schumann’s largest, most ambitious work was not to be missed. For this most literary of composers, setting the Alpha and Omega of German poetry was a labour of love, which he undertook in... Read more... |
Rana, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall BirminghamMonday, 11 January 2016
As pianist Beatrice Rana ran up the final bars of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, the conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla turned to her soloist and simply beamed. As well she might. Rana is an artist whose advance publicity belies the seriousness and... Read more... |
Faust, RLPO, Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolFriday, 13 November 2015
Four years ago, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic embarked on a two-year project to play all the Mahler symphonic works over a couple of seasons. It was an ambitious project but it was one which, then, had hall staff dusting down... Read more... |
Skride, CBSO, Wellber, Symphony Hall BirminghamFriday, 06 November 2015
If Omer Meir Wellber is making a bid for Andris Nelsons’s old music directorship in Birmingham, he could hardly have signalled his intentions more audaciously. This concert began with Wagner’s Lohengrin Prelude and ended with Brahms’s First Symphony... Read more... |
Nelson Goerner, Wigmore HallTuesday, 29 September 2015
Nelson Goerner has settled rather gloriously into being a musicians’ musician. An artist of this calibre should be selling out the Wigmore Hall – but it wasn’t his fault that yesterday was Monday, and the pianophiles who turned out to hear him were... Read more... |
Röschmann, Uchida, Wigmore HallWednesday, 06 May 2015
If you were one of the world’s most famous pianists, you’d surely want to explore the masterpieces among Lieder with the great singers. Having chosen less than wisely for Schubert, as some of us thought, Mitsuko Uchida has now found a powerful... Read more... |
