Sibelius
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Liszt, SibeliusFriday, 08 July 2011
This week’s reviews include a generous Liszt anthology played by one of the 20th century’s most fondly remembered pianists. There’s a reissued box of Beethoven symphonies performed on modern instruments by one of the classiest European orchestras.... Read more... |
London Schools Symphony Orchestra, Segerstam, Barbican HallThursday, 28 April 2011
With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's... Read more... |
Bryant, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Robertson, Barbican HallFriday, 11 February 2011
Never envy a relatively new voice in music his or her place in a concert shared with Sibelius. Invariably the economical Finnish master will triumph with his ideas and how he streams them in a forward-moving adventure. You sit staring at all the... Read more... |
At home with Jean SibeliusThursday, 25 November 2010
It will remain one of the most unforgettable times of my life - the privilege of spending four hours alone with the curator in the house of Jean Sibelius outside Helsinki, deep in a snowbound March scene.In fact, I just couldn't stop writing about... Read more... |
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, St David's Hall, CardiffFriday, 12 November 2010
How much do you know about centaurs? Probably you know they are horses below the withers, human above. But did you know they were heavy drinkers who once got out of hand at the wedding of the King of the Lapiths, tried to rape the bride and got... Read more... |
Tetzlaff Quartet, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 22 October 2010
Their oaky, cultured and selectively scary-wild playing seemed to cast long autumn shadows over a sparse but intent audience. This is the kind of rare programme top violinist Christian Tetzlaff, his cellist sister Tanja and friends like to work on... Read more... |
Grimaud, Philharmonia, Salonen, Royal Festival HallThursday, 30 September 2010
Esa-Pekka Salonen and his dauntless band of Philharmonia players have been wrestling with heroes. After a celebration of Wagner's Tristan, the legend-making shifted further north last night. Here was Sibelius first as the plain-singing, well-loved... Read more... |
Shaham, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Robertson, Royal Albert HallFriday, 27 August 2010
When Mark-Anthony Turnage presents a piece called Hammered Out, that’s pretty much what you expect to hear. Prior to starting work on this co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Turnage was quoted as saying, “I don’t... Read more... |
Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Dausgaard, Royal Albert HallThursday, 12 August 2010
This was the Prom I’d earmarked as the most unmissable event out of this year’s 76. Starry attraction was the century-overdue UK premiere of maverick-mystic Dane Rued Langgaard’s Music of the Spheres, born for this of all venues. But the meshing of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Helsinki: Sunflowers By the Frozen BalticSunday, 25 April 2010
Venezuela's joyful musical education programme known as El Sistema is the phenomenon of the age, the success story that many western countries now seek to replicate. And that's great. But Britain, for a start, might re-engage its own back-to-basics... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Ticciati, Barbican HallFriday, 26 March 2010
It’s a very assured - not to say very brave - young conductor who chooses to make his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’ notoriously challenging Seventh Symphony. Mighty talents have fallen at this particular fence, defeated by... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 6Saturday, 20 March 2010
This month’s reviews have a heavy late-romantic bias: chamber music by Dvořák, fascinating and idiosyncratic Mahler from Bernstein and Tennstedt, and some superb recordings of Bruckner, Sibelius and Rachmaninov (or Rachmaninoff, as Gianandrea Noseda... Read more... |
