Strauss
Graham Rickson
Donnacha Dennehy: The Hunger Alarm Will Sound/Alan Pierson, with Katherine Manley and Iarla Ó Lionáird (Nonesuch)The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 resulted in the deaths of one million Irish citizens to starvation and prompted a further million to emigrate. In 1851, American social reformer Asenath Nicholson travelled across the Atlantic to document exactly what was happening, traversing the length of Ireland on foot. Nicholson’s text forms a substantial chunk of the libretto of Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger, extracts from her report interspersed with lyrics taken from the song Na Read more ...
David Nice
She was recording Carmen in Paris, and the Radio France auditorium was packed with the press, asking such dazzling questions as "have you been up the Eiffel Tower yet?" and "what do you think of the French men?". I thought, given the statuesque approach, it might be best to wonder if there was a nobility in the characterisation. Jessye Norman refined it to "dignity" and enlarged graciously on that (I can no longer find the transcript or the printed feature). The end result in Seiji Ozawa's Philips recording was far from the expected improbability. The soprano could always float a line, and Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Montrealers exude a particular kind of happiness and have wonderfully snappy expressions to convey it: “Chu correc”, means ‘I’m fine’, and “C’est l’fun” means...exactly what it looks like. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a distinctly proud Montrealer (“It’s where I live, it’s where my partner lives, it’s where my cats live...it is where I feel truly and fully myself,” he has said), and that special effervescence was plainly visible in both of his concerts at the Proms with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.In the second concert, he brought it notably to the Suite from Richard Strauss's Der Read more ...
David Nice
With two German giants roaring - Brahms in leonine mode, Richard Strauss more with tongue in armour-plated cheek - it could have all been too much. Not in the eloquent hands of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's Music Director Designate, Vasily Petrenko, or pianist Denis Kozhukhin, the most musically disciplined of Russians.Indeed, you felt this team could have gone on to give us from Brahms's First Piano Concerto to give us the equally titanic Second. I've heard that pairing work in concert with the magisterial Elisabeth Leonskaja, and there's no doubt that when Yefim Bronfman played the Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Do You Believe in Heather? Chamber music by Ståle Kleiberg (2L)Ståle Kleiberg's String Quartet No 3 is a masterpiece, I think. Small but perfectly formed, it's unassumingly brilliant. Kleiberg’s use of “extended tonality” is fascinating: listen to this quartet blind and you'd have a hard time placing it chronologically. Structurally impressive and melodically rich, it grips like a benign vice. Especially in the closing seconds, a physically exhilarating tie-up of loose ends which culminates in a deliciously unexpected final chord. Honestly, it's seriously, seriously good, and Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
There is no doubting Diana Damrau’s star power. She is not a demonstrative performer, and her voice is small, but the sheer character of her tone, and the passion she invests, make every line special. She is not one to over-sentimentalise either, so there was never any danger of Strauss’s Four Last Songs turning saccharine here. Conductor Mariss Jansons was on her wavelength, and brought richly coloured but always carefully controlled support from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.All of the Strauss on this programme – the Four Last Songs and Ein Heldenleben – was given in broad and Read more ...
David Nice
With eyes swivelled towards who'll take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor in 2021, two of the strongest possibilities are to be found within the orchestra's masthead of associates. Another Finn, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, currently a great choice as the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra's trailblazer, and that best of Czechs Jakub Hrůša, chief in Bamberg, are already serving up electrifying events unsurpassed on the London concert scene, and Rouvali's all-Richard Strauss programme last night was the real deal. Eventually.It started with quite some wilful pulling- Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder’s first concert in the Hallé Thursday series for 2018-19 was on clearly mapped Hallé territory – Richard Strauss and Elgar. They have a reputation, and a tradition, of playing these composers’ music very well. They’ve already recorded Elgar's Second Symphony and, judging by the microphones around the platform, they’re doing the same right now with Strauss’s Don Quixote.The soloists were their own principals, cellist Nicholas Trygstad (pictured below) and viola player Timothy Pooley. Though it won’t be discernible in any purely audio document of the occasion, they and their Read more ...
David Nice
Why are great Wagnerian singers the most down-to-earth and collegial in the world of opera? Perhaps you have to be to master and sustain the biggest roles in the business, ones which can't be performed in isolation, and a strong constitution helps, too. Birgit Nilsson, the farmer's daughter born in rural Sweden 100 years ago, had all those qualities and many more. So, too, does her compatriot and one-time disciple Nina Stemme, making her perhaps the most appropriate laureate of the Birgit Nilsson Prize in terms of carrying on the line (the previous recipients at various intervals since the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Edward Gardner was back amongst friends when he opened the Hallé’s Thursday series concerts. This was the place where he made his mark, as the Manchester orchestra’s first ever assistant conductor (and Youth Orchestra music director), and he’s been a welcome visitor ever since. There’s an air of personal authority to him now, and a physical style a little less reminiscent of Sir Mark Elder – from whom he undoubtedly learnt a lot in those early days – and both the Hallé Orchestra members and the Hallé Choir gave him of their best.Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra was characterized by Read more ...
David Nice
Sibling incest among the symbolic clutter of the Royal Opera Ring on Wednesday, last night necrophilia and a bit more incest – mother and daughter this time, courtesy of the director's imagination – in a stone-cold ENO Salome. Adena Jacobs' credentials were promising, not least her time at Sydney's cutting-edge Belvoir Theatre. That this would be a Salome unlike any other was a given. But throw out the essential interplay between the characters of Wilde's ornate play as filtered through the insidious colours of Richard Strauss's ever-amazing score, and you have to find an equally feverish Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This concert was inspired by the huge scale of the Albert Hall. The three works all evoke spacious vistas, through their expansive textures, echo effects and horn calls. Mozart, Haas and Strauss made for a diverse programme though, the three works all written in different centuries, and each on a grander scale than the last.The Mozart Notturno in D Major is one of his many serenades written for the Salzburg aristocracy. The twist is that the ensemble is divided into four groups, each a string orchestra with a pair of horns added, and the four groups are set at a distance, the musical ideas Read more ...