Schumann
Mitsuko Uchida, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 06 October 2010
Mitsuko Uchida’s playing is a glorious collusion of intellect and fantasy. Her recitals are meticulously planned but seemingly unexpected with chosen pieces impacting upon each other in ways one might not have imagined. Three keyboard giants –... 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... |
Stemme, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Dausgaard, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 24 August 2010
“The curse of Schumann,” remarked Prom director Roger Wright to me before Monday’s concert, bemoaning the fact that only (only!) 2,000 seats had been sold for the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s concert under Thomas Dausgaard - whereas Dausgaard's... Read more... |
Josefowicz, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Knussen, Royal Albert HallThursday, 29 July 2010
"Stockhausen's festive overture from 1977 opens the programme," declared the Proms website cheerily. Come again? Festive? Stockhausen? From my limited but largely enthusiastic knowledge of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen - much of which is about... Read more... |
Zacharias, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert HallMonday, 26 July 2010
The Proms listings are full of concerts a bit like the one last night that seem to offer up, on paper, little of real burning interest: no big names, no star foreign orchestras, no intriguing rarities, no new works, nothing beyond one hard-working... Read more... |
The BBC's new TV dawn for the PromsFriday, 23 July 2010
For the couch-bound classical music lover, keeping up with the Proms is pretty straightforward. Step one: open bottle of agreeable claret. Step two: turn on Radio 3 and listen, or watch selected Proms on BBC Two or BBC Four. Or, indeed, catch up... Read more... |
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Petrenko, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 20 July 2010
What a thrilling sound the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra can make when it chooses! What a grippingly deep tone, from a lower strings section that sounds like you’ve got the bass on your car stereo turned up daringly high, what clinical... Read more... |
Christian & Tanja Tetzlaff, Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore HallTuesday, 11 May 2010
Chamber music is a highly motivational experience - here is a group of instruments of quite different qualities parading, fighting, ganging up, inviting each other’s new ideas, dialoguing, and all this variety heightening the build-up to the moment... Read more... |
Leonskaja, BBCSO, Bĕlohlávek, Barbican HallSunday, 09 May 2010
Fantasies in apparent freefall, though in fact ruthlessly organised and blindingly well executed, were the name of last night's game - an endgame, as it happened, to the BBC Symphony Orchestra's hardest-working Barbican season before the marathon of... Read more... |
Bengt Forsberg, Wigmore HallThursday, 15 April 2010
He may not be the most famous musical Swede - in terms of name-recognition that would be Benny of Abba fame rather than Bengt the long-term recital partner of the divine Anne Sofie von Otter - but everyone in the business seems to adore Forsberg, a... Read more... |
Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, Barbican HallTuesday, 02 March 2010
In every partnership there is a leader, and it’s not always the featured name. While the hall was packed with Ma followers for this rare cello-and-piano recital, what emerged was a richly sensitising foretaste of what the Emanuel Ax residency is... Read more... |
Nikolai Demidenko, Wigmore HallMonday, 07 December 2009
Piano ballades and fantasies are the repositories of dreams. They are the places where the mind is left to wander, to roam precipitously, unaided by known paths, undisturbed by familiar structures. The romantic fantasies and ballades of last night's... Read more... |
