Vienna
Prom 72 review: Vienna Philharmonic, Harding - uncertain Mahler Six partly redeemed by brassFriday, 08 September 2017
Outlines of a real face had begun to emerge in Daniel Harding’s conducting personality. His youthful rise to the top initially yielded neutral concerts with the LSO and a glassy, overpraised recording of Mahler’s Tenth in the Deryck Cooke completion... Read more... |
Imagine... Alma Deutscher: Finding Cinderella, BBC One review - beguiling profile of a musical prodigyTuesday, 05 September 2017
Morag Tinto’s documentary is a profile of composer Alma Deutscher, who hit the headlines at the end of last year when her opera based on the Cinderella story premiered in Vienna. What’s unusual about that, you might ask? Apart from being female,... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, Welsh National Opera review - hard to imagine a stronger castTuesday, 13 June 2017
Der Rosenkavalier, you might think, is one of those operas that belong in a specific place and time and no other. “In Vienna,” says Strauss's score, “in the first years of Maria Theresia’s reign” (i.e. the 1740s). But this, of course, is a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Telemann, Alban Gerhardt, Wiener SymphonikerSaturday, 11 March 2017
Telemann Fantasias for solo violin Aisha Orazbayeva (violin) (Prah Recordings)Telemann, too readily dismissed as a plodding hack, gets a radical makeover here; the tracklisting makes it seem as if Aisha Orazbayeva is giving us six of the... Read more... |
Summerfield, Jackson, Riches, Classical Opera, Page, Wigmore HallWednesday, 18 January 2017
Young Amadeus is growing up in real time with MOZART 250, Classical Opera's ambitious 26-year project following its hero's creative life from childhood to the grave. 2015's start, marking two and a half centuries since the boy wonder's first visit... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier - Cast 2, Royal OperaFriday, 23 December 2016
Fiftysomething may well be the new 32, the age Strauss and Hofmannsthal made the central figure of the Marschallin in their "comedy for music" Der Rosenkavalier. Hearts and minds no doubt still move with Renée Fleming, senior doyenne of the role in... Read more... |
Vienna: Empire, Dynasty and Dream, BBC FourFriday, 09 December 2016
Ebullient, prolific, loquacious and a charmingly enthusiastic historian both in print and for television, Simon Sebag Montefiore has turned his attention to the pivotal city of Vienna, nourished equally by the Danube and its central geographical... Read more... |
Proms at...Cadogan Hall: Hardenberger, Gruber, ASMFTuesday, 09 August 2016
Superior light music with a sting, done at the highest level: what could be better for a summer lunchtime in the light and airy Cadogan Hall? Our curator was that most collegial of top soloists, trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. He'd invited colleagues... Read more... |
Freud: Genius of the Modern World, BBC FourFriday, 01 July 2016
Recently the television historian Bettany Hughes, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, energetic, enthusiastic and rather astonished, has tramped across the continents on our behalf, making a clutch of hour-long documentary introductions to the individuals... Read more... |
Françoise-Green Piano Duo, St John's Smith SquareFriday, 08 April 2016
Who wouldn't wish to have been a fly on the wall during those pre-recording days when composers and their friends played piano-duet arrangements of the great orchestral works? Any notion that we don't need such reductions anymore was swept aside by... Read more... |
Remembering Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)Tuesday, 08 March 2016
2016 began with the passing of Pierre Boulez, arguably the doyen of modernism in the field of classical music. Now, only a couple of months later, it is the turn of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a musician occupying a similar level of singular elevation but... Read more... |
Perahia, Richter, LSO, Haitink, BarbicanMonday, 21 September 2015
Last night's perfectly-judged, superbly communicated performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony served as a reminder that the passion, experience and astonishing musicality of 86-year-old conductor Bernard Haitink are things to be cherished and never... Read more... |
