Sibelius
Colli, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican HallSaturday, 17 January 2015
Was 1911 the best ever year for music? Works premiered or composed then include Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony he’d completed in outline by the time of his death that May,... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the East Neuk Festival: Littoral SchubertiadSunday, 20 July 2014
Schubert played and sung through a long summer day by the water: what could be more enchanting? The prospect did not take into account the pain in that all too short-lived genius’s late work: when interpreted by a world-class trio, quartet and... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Tigran Mansurian, Sibelius, Louis SchwizgebelSaturday, 17 May 2014
Tigran Mansurian: Quasi parlando Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Anja Lechner (cello), Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Candida Thompson (ECM)Wolfgang Sandner's sleeve notes rightly mention the “extreme frugality of expressive resources” in the music... Read more... |
Josefowicz, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanThursday, 27 March 2014
Depth, height, breadth, a sense of the new and strange in three brilliantly-programmed works spanning just over a century: all these and a clarity in impassioned execution told us why the BBC Symphony Orchestra was inspired in choosing Finn Sakari... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Alwyn, Sibelius, TenebraeFriday, 14 March 2014
William Alwyn: Piano Music Mark Bebbington (Somm)William Alwyn was a Suffolk-based composer who died in 1985. He dabbled in painting and writing, and held the post of Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music for nearly 30 years.... Read more... |
Boris Giltburg, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 15 November 2013
Among the diaspora of younger-generation Russian or Russian-trained pianists, there are at least four whose intellect and poetry match their technique. Three whose craft was honed at the Moscow or St Petersburg Conservatories – Yevgeny Sudbin,... Read more... |
Prom 64: Vavic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, JurowskiSaturday, 31 August 2013
Legends, myths, and Nietzsche’s Superman - which for the purposes of this London Philharmonic Prom was none other than Vladimir Jurowski himself. His extraordinary ear, his nurturing and layering of texture, was a constant source of intrigue and... Read more... |
Prom 52: Batiashvili, BBC Symphony Orchestra, OramoThursday, 22 August 2013
Concert programmes are designed to make the mind flexible with constant contrasts. More often, though, the great is the enemy of the good-ish. Last night an Elgar masterpiece was always going to overshadow its second-half predecessor, a hazily... Read more... |
BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 2013 Final, BBC FourMonday, 24 June 2013
Once in a blue moon, the judges would seem to have got it wrong. I can think only of 2001, when stunning Latvian mezzo Elina Garanča failed to win the coveted goblet but has since gone on to deserved fame as one of the top half-dozen singers... Read more... |
Sir Colin Davis, 1927-2013Monday, 15 April 2013
In its ebbs, flows and final grand flourishing, the career of Sir Colin Davis was reminiscent of some of the great musical masterpieces with which he became closely identified. From Mozart to Tippett, Berlioz to Beethoven and Sibelius, Davis proved... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Richard Rodney Bennett, SibeliusSaturday, 13 October 2012
Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier András Schiff (ECM)András Schiff was a finalist in the 1975 Leeds International Piano Competition. He came third – presumably having confounded expectations by playing Bach’s D minor keyboard concerto instead of... Read more... |
The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal, Buxton FestivalTuesday, 10 July 2012
Many years ago in Helsinki I met Sibelius’s daughter, Margareta, and her husband, the conductor Jussi Jalas. He used to come to Manchester to conduct the Halle. And it was he who rescued from obscurity his father-in-law’s only completed opera, The... Read more... |
