Classical Reviews
Douglas, LSO, Søndergård, BarbicanWednesday, 30 November 2016
Thomas Søndergård stood in for this concert at a day’s notice – Valery Gergiev is apparently recovering from a knee operation and unable to travel. He left behind a curious programme, centred around Prokofiev’s quirky but dour Sixth Symphony. It’s a difficult work to schedule, but Gergiev added two sweeteners, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and First Piano Concerto. Read more... |
Total Immersion: Richard Rodney Bennett, BarbicanMonday, 28 November 2016
Send in the paradoxes. Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012) had been so obsessed as a young man by music of the avant-garde, he would hitch-hike to Darmstadt to be in the same room as his (then) idols Berio, Maderna, and Boulez. He and Cornelius Cardew premiered important works by Boulez in the UK. And yet this was the same man who would later write, sing and play a cabaret song, “Early to Bed”, based on an endearing habit of Blossom Dearie. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Elgar, Mahler, Georges PrêtreSaturday, 26 November 2016
Elgar Remastered (Somm)
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Large, Hudson Shad, BBCSO, Gaffigan, BarbicanThursday, 24 November 2016
Has there ever been a more pertinent time to revive the poetic mythologies of Brecht and Weill? The writer said that the good-life-for-dollars city of Mahagonny was not exclusively an American state of mind and should be set in any country where it's performed. But the inverted morality tale of The Seven Deadly Sins explicitly references seven American cities. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Schubert, TostiSaturday, 19 November 2016
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CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 17 November 2016
Is there anything on a concert programme more guaranteed to make the heart lift – or to prove that a conductor has their musical priorities straight – than a Haydn symphony? If you're tired of Haydn, you're tired of life: there’s no music more joyous, more inventive or more resistant to vanity. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla chose his Symphony No 6 of 1761, called Le Matin for its opening sunrise and the freshness of its ideas, and it was a delight. Read more... |
Grande Messe des Morts, BBCSO, Roth, RAHMonday, 14 November 2016
Lest we forget. On Flanders’ Fields. For the Fallen. No one does stiff-upper-lip, buttoned-up remembrance quite like the English. Since its composition only a little over half a century ago, the War Requiem has become our national anthem for the departed. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Jonathan Dove, Ayako Fujiki, Anne Sofie von OtterSaturday, 12 November 2016
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Ehnes, Hallé, Elder, Heyward, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterFriday, 11 November 2016
Two things to note in Thursday’s Hallé performance at the Bridgewater Hall: the debut in the Manchester main series of their highly talented new assistant conductor, Jonathon Heyward, and another stride along the road towards the Hallé/Elder complete edition of the Vaughan Williams symphonies. Read more... |
Sampson, BBCSSO, Runnicles, Usher Hall, EdinburghMonday, 07 November 2016
Mahler said of the last movement of his Fourth Symphony that it should be pure, like the “undifferentiated blue of the sky”. Writing the symphony in his lakeside retreat at Maiernigg in the summer of 1900, he probably had a different sort of blue in mind to that which streaked the Edinburgh sky on an icy Sunday afternoon in November. Read more... |
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op. 90, Op. 101 and Op. 106 Steven Osborne (Hyperion)
Jonathan Dove: For an Unknown Soldier, An Airmail Letter from Mozart Nicky Spence (tenor), Melvyn Tan (piano), London Mozart Players/Nicholas Cleobury (Signum)Pages
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