Classical Reviews
Mitsuko Uchida, RFH review - Schubert from rough to heavenlyWednesday, 29 November 2017
When you've found your living ideal for Schubert's sonatas - Elisabeth Leonskaja, surely - it can be a challenge to stay open-minded and welcome another take on the profundities. Read more... |
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival review - new generation throws down the gauntletTuesday, 28 November 2017
Reading the line-up for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival can be a bit of a //+DiGit<ijjjjjjjjjjjjj.ggiiigggggH1-RMXn4000// experience (and no, I haven’t invented those). There are flashing light warnings. Ear defenders are routinely handed out. Read more... |
Labèques, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place review - good-natured Schubert and Mozart delightSaturday, 25 November 2017
The Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place last night showcased both the best and worst things about attending live concerts, with the pros outweighing the cons. Early on, extraneous noise made me long for the pure listening experience of a good pair of headphones, but elsewhere the immediacy and physicality of the live experience was genuinely exciting. Read more... |
Hough, Basel CO, Holliger, Cadogan Hall review - heavenly lengths in SchubertWednesday, 22 November 2017
Before the age of photography, people and places were recorded in ink or paint or sound. The process of recording was not instant, could not be rushed, and produced by its nature an experience of layers. On the last leg of a brief UK tour, the Basel Chamber Orchestra brought to Cadogan Hall two landscapes and two portraits, in performances notably true to life and unified as harmoniously as a Rothko quartet by the ensemble’s own cultivated tonal palette. Read more... |
Singcircle, Barbican review - veteran ensemble bids farewell with StockhausenTuesday, 21 November 2017
STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Read more... |
Frang, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - an Elgar tradition renewedFriday, 17 November 2017
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has such a rapport with her Birmingham public that she can silence a capacity crowd - 2000-plus audience members, spilling over into Symphony Hall’s choir stalls – with the tiniest of gestures. Into that silence she neatly placed the first chord of Messiaen’s Un sourire, and you could hear every fibre of the string texture. Read more... |
Messiaen & Shostakovich, St John's Smith Square review - Osborne and Gerhardt anchor 1940s masterpiecesWednesday, 15 November 2017
Only connect. Read more... |
András Schiff, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – rigour and honestyTuesday, 14 November 2017
Intellectual rigour and emotional honesty are the rewarding qualities in András Schiff’s Bach playing. Virtuosity comes as standard, too. And you get value for your money – his programme all but filled two-and-a-half hours, and he was as completely in command at the end as he had been at the beginning. Read more... |
Florian Boesch, Justus Zeyen, Wigmore Hall review - power, intimacy and atmosphereSaturday, 11 November 2017
Florian Boesch is a big man. He’s tall, stocky, and with his bald head and stubble could seem more like a gangster than a Lieder singer. His voice is beautiful, but it matches his appearance – big, weighty and imposing. Read more... |
Schubert Ensemble, Kings Place review - spot-on introductions, dazzling performancesFriday, 10 November 2017
To demonstrate what makes chamber masterpieces tick and then to play them, brilliantly, is a sequence which ought to happen more often. Perhaps too many musicians think their eloquence is confined to their instruments. Not violinist Simon Blendis and pianist William Howard of the Schubert Ensemble. Read more... |
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