Stravinsky
Graham Rickson
Louise Farrenc: Symphonies 1-3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is not perhaps the best-known name among pre-20th century women composers garnering increased attention recent years – but she might be the best. She managed to achieve success in her own lifetime, even in the field of the symphony – the form most guarded by the high-art (male) gatekeepers – before pretty much disappearing from music history. This release of Farrenc’s three symphonies (plus two overtures) by the Insula Orchestra, playing on period instruments, makes a very persuasive Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Shostakovich: Symphonies 8, 9 and 10 Berliner Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko (Berlin Phil Media)Potential purchasers worrying that the Berlin sound might be a little too well-upholstered for Shostakovich needn’t worry; one striking aspect of the performances captured in this set is their rawness and bite. Herbert von Karajan made two superb recordings of Symphony No. 10 with the Berlin Philharmonic in the 1960s and 1980s, and Kirill Petrenko’s new one is similarly involving. That he’s got an orchestra capable of playing the second and fourth movements up to tempo is a plus: I’ve rarely Read more ...
David Nice
What a manifesto against those in power who seem determined to knock the UK off its hard-won classical music pedestal: hundreds of young choristers and instrumentalists of two fabulous orchestras in a week-long celebration of innovative programming and presentation. Any politician attending – I’d like to think there were a few, but I doubt it - would have been fired up to devote every effort in support of British youth and musicSorry not to have got to Wednesday night’s Albert Hall celebration of the National Youth Choir’s 40th anniversary, or Friday’s Edinburgh spectacular from the National Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Nadia & Lili Boulanger: Les Heures Claires - The Complete Songs Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Raquel Camarinha (soprano), Anne de Fornel (piano), Sarah Nemtanu (violin), Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello) (Harmonia Mundi)This 3-CD set of 63 songs and instrumental pieces by the Boulanger sisters, Nadia (1887-1979) and Lili (1893-1918) really is a treasure-trove. It is claimed that it is the first “intégrale” of the songs by both sisters; these are occasionally interwoven with instrumental pieces. To over-generalize, the first two CDs give an insight into the level of Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Debussy: Piano Works Volume 2 Dennis Lee (piano) (ICSM Records)I’m a huge fan of Colin Matthews’ idiomatic orchestral transcriptions of Debussy’s Préludes, so much so that it’s been a good few years since I’ve listened to the piano originals. This disc caught me unawares and made me reflect on just how difficult this music is to bring off. Bringing out every detail can impede the music’s flow, while concentrating too much on colour and atmosphere can make everything sound a bit blurry and vague. This is Malaysian pianist Dennis Lee’s second Debussy collection, and it’s something special Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two intriguing themes and two great guest artists were offered by the BBC Philharmonic to their Saturday night audience in the Bridgewater Hall: the themes were what “classicism” really is, and the variety of music inspired by (or written for) dance.The artists were Angela Hewitt, soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, and Sir Andrew Davis, making another welcome visit to Manchester. You might say that a third theme of the evening was the chance to see the two of them deliver a masterclass in piano playing and orchestral conducting.Classicism, then: what is it? Whole books have been Read more ...
stephen.walsh
There are conductors, and then again there are choral conductors. I sang under David Willcocks in Tallis’s 40-part "Spem in alium" and remember vividly that long-armed semaphoring that he later applied so notably with the Bach Choir.Sofi Jeannin, choral conductor par excellence (of, among others, the BBC Singers), is likewise a semaphorer, not always comfortable to watch, effective if not outstandingly individual in the outcome. In this typically hybrid BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert she conducted three tricky choral works with the dependable BBC National Chorus of Wales, and, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Paris, Vienna, Rome – all have their operatic homages. But London (and I mean real London, not the slightly-grey Italy of Donizetti’s Tudor Queens) only rarely makes it into the opera house. Curiously, on the rare occasions it does, it’s the seedy side of things that’s very much at the fore in The Beggar’s Opera and, of course, the Hogarth-inspired The Rake’s Progress.The city is the touchstone for any staging of the Stravinsky, telling the audience where on the dial between fairytale and morality play we’re going to fall. In Frederic Wake-Walker’s new production for the Royal Academy of Read more ...
Robert Beale
This was at first sight a somewhat ordinary looking programme for the BBC Philharmonic: Beethoven, Brahms … even Stravinsky doesn’t frighten a Saturday night audience in Manchester these days. They come for a good night out and quite a lot of them applaud after every first movement – even more if they can (and that means they don’t consider themselves high-brow, which is always a good thing for classical concerts).But the most notable thing was that there was an outbreak of affection and bonhomie which seemed to begin from the platform and spread out to the hall. Elena Schwarz was Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Of all the classic musical scores that could appeal to a choreographer, three are catnip: Ravel’s Bolero, Bizet’s Carmen, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Each has been set dozens of times and the veteran Swedish dancemaker Mats Ek has notched up all three.Such is the pull of Rite, in fact, that Ek has just created his second version, almost 40 years after his first. It wasn’t that he was unhappy with that earlier Rite, he told an interviewer, but he felt that the drama of the music had more to uncover – specifically on the subject of “young women being forced into a tradition, which has Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Jacqueline du Pré: The Complete Warner Recordings (Warner Classics)There’s something both humbling and miraculous that a great musician’s recorded output can be squeezed into a neat box. Most of the material in Warner Classics’ latest Jacqueline du Pré collection has been reissued before, but one suspects that this will be its final appearance in CD format. Multiple sclerosis ended du Pré's playing career in 1973; 50 years on, one wonders whether her stellar reputation was justified, and whether these recordings stand up. Asking a couple of string playing contacts and trawling Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Superstition, herd instinct, brutality, base terror. Whatever the precise narrative themes of Pina Bausch's response to The Rite of Spring – the most admired of dozens of dance settings of Igor Stravinsky’s score – it’s clear that it concerns aspects of behaviour deep-rooted in the human animal.“How would you dance if you knew you were about to die?” was the question posed by the choreographer to her dancers back in 1975. And that visceral immediacy is brought to the fore by a 36-strong company of dancers assembled from across 14 African countries expressly for the performance of this Read more ...