Classical Reviews
Octets, Wigmore Hall review - Heath Quartet and star friends effervesceSaturday, 16 December 2017
To compose a masterpiece in your teens is rare enough; to choose the most elaborate form in chamber music, an octet for eight strings, ensures a peculiar kind of immortality. Read more... |
Schumann Street, Spitalfields Festival review - illumination on a winter's nightWednesday, 13 December 2017
An icy, wet wind snuck under the door of house number 8 in Fournier Street, where Uri Caine, bundled in coat and woolly hat, conjured Schumann’s darkly powerful "Im Rhein". Beside him, perched on a weaver’s stool, was improvising legend Phil Minton, rasping, whistling and groaning his way through "The wilderness of my life". Read more... |
Mark Padmore, Mitsuko Uchida, Wigmore Hall review - direct and uncompromising SchubertTuesday, 12 December 2017
Expectations ran high for Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida in Winterreise. Read more... |
Chineke! Ensemble, RNCM, Manchester review - musical advocacyTuesday, 12 December 2017
The Chineke! Orchestra has won golden opinions for its ground-breaking work and musical achievement, and Manchester caught up to the extent of a visit from the eight-person Chineke! Ensemble to the Royal Northern College of Music. Read more... |
Salonen conducts Sibelius, RFH/Oramo conducts Salonen, Barbican review - Finnish psychedeliaMonday, 11 December 2017
After Sakari Oramo's dazzling Sibelius rattlebag with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the centenary day of Finnish independence, things weren't looking so good for Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia at half time last Thursday (★★★). Read more... |
Capuçon, BBCPO, Mena, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - awesome unityMonday, 11 December 2017
Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is a big work in every sense: four movements, plus a solo cadenza before the last one that makes it seem almost like five; a soloist’s role that even David Oistrakh (for whom it was first written) found taxing; symphonic construction and instrumentation which make the orchestral contribution at least as important as the solo one. Read more... |
Johnston, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - sheer adrenalin in early SibeliusThursday, 07 December 2017
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. Read more... |
Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, Wigmore Hall review - lyrical Brahms from veteran duoWednesday, 06 December 2017
Sonata no 1 – Sonata no 2 – Sonata no 3 – that’s barely a recital programme, it’s just a list. Fortunately, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt (pictured below by Neda Navae) have good musical reasons for presenting the Brahms violin sonatas in chronological order. Read more... |
Darius Battiwalla, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester review - improvisation extraordinaireFriday, 01 December 2017
Organ improvisation is a remarkable art, prized in French musical culture particularly, and there was something highly appropriate in the choice of The Phantom of the Opera – a screening of the 1925 silent film with live accompaniment on the RNCM concert hall organ by Darius Battiwalla – as part of the "French Connections" year-long festival at the Manchester conservatoire. Read more... |
Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - electricity in Sibelius and HillborgThursday, 30 November 2017
Even given the peerless standards already set by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their Sibelius cycle, this instalment was always going to be the toughest, featuring the most elusive of the symphonies, the Sixth, and the sparest, the Fourth. As it turned out, all challenges were met with Oramo's... Read more... |
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