Sibelius
Philharmonia, Davis, Three Choirs FestivalWednesday, 29 July 2015
In his memoir As I Remember Arthur Bliss is reticent about his experiences on the Western Front. He describes his “purely automatic” impulse to enlist in August 1914, and later recounts the nightmares that troubled his sleep for a decade after the... Read more... |
Prom 1: Vogt, Maltman, BBCSO, OramoSaturday, 18 July 2015
So it begins. Thousands of expectant audience members in a sweltering Albert Hall – heave ho! – riotous applause for the leader as he tunes the orchestra. A few more visits and all this will seem normal again, but it’s a culture shock to be thrown... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Medtner, Sibelius, TchaikovskySaturday, 11 July 2015
Medtner: Piano Sonatas Alessandro Taverna (Somm)It's tempting to dismiss Nikolai Medtner without having heard a note of his music. Those who dismiss him as a less flamboyant Rachmaninov contemporary are making a huge mistake. Prokofiev enjoyed... Read more... |
Juntunen, Philharmonia, Ashkenazy, RFHFriday, 12 June 2015
Vladimir Ashkenazy should be made an honorary Finn: not just for his constant championship of Sibelius’s orchestral works throughout his conducting life so far, but above all for the way he understands them. On the evidence of last night’s 150th... Read more... |
Kozhukhin, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSunday, 24 May 2015
No two symphonic swansongs could be more different than Sibelius’s heart-of-darkness Tapiola and Nielsen’s enigmatically joky Sixth Symphony. In its evasive yet organic jumpiness, the Danish composer’s anything but “Simple Symphony” – the Sixth’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dresden: Fire and IceSunday, 24 May 2015
Dresden is slowly opening up to the world. All but destroyed by British bombing in the Second World War, locked away inside Communist East Germany for 40 years, it is now becoming a tourist honeypot. On a warm day in May, you can see the snap-happy... Read more... |
Building a Library: Living with SibeliusThursday, 19 March 2015
I’ve just spent five weeks in the company of a very austere and sometimes frightening masterpiece, Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, hearing a great many recordings of it for Building a Library, the abiding gem of Radio 3’s CD Review in which the critic... Read more... |
Von Otter, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanThursday, 19 February 2015
Hair-raising guaranteed or your money back: that might have been a publicity gambit, had there been one, for Sakari Oramo’s latest journey with the BBC Symphony Orchestra around a Nielsen symphony. That he knows the ropes to scale the granite cliff... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Sakari OramoTuesday, 17 February 2015
Rattle and the Berliners went home at the beginning of the week with vine-leaves in their hair. There's now something else to celebrate. Exactly one week on from the second concert in their Sibelius cycle, the Barbican hosted even more of an all-out... Read more... |
Sibelius Cycle 3, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, BarbicanFriday, 13 February 2015
The Seventh Symphony was by some way the most scrappy and inaccurate of the performances in the Sibelius cycle given at the Barbican by, it must be said again, the world’s best orchestra. The oboes crunched a chord that fairly made you wince. A few... Read more... |
Sibelius Cycle 2, Kavakos, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, BarbicanThursday, 12 February 2015
Bass lines were Edward Seckerson’s starting point yesterday in welcoming the Berlin Philharmonic Sibelius cycle to London, and none strikes more terror from the depths than the subterranean growl that launches the most selectively-scored symphony of... Read more... |
Sibelius Cycle 1, Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, BarbicanWednesday, 11 February 2015
Sir Simon Rattle’s Sibelian journey has been long and fruitful and has taken him all the way from Birmingham to Berlin, and more particularly the revered Philharmonic where the spaces between the notes now resonate in extraordinary ways and the bass... Read more... |
