Classical Reviews
AV Festival, Newcastle/ Heiner Goebbels's Surrogate Cities, RFH/ London Contemporary Orchestra, Brunt, The RoundhouseMonday, 05 March 2012
It's often more fun on the margins. The pickings are richer. The view is clearer. You can take aim easier. The AV Festival has spent more than eight years here, on the counter-cultural edges, delving into the divisional cracks between art, music and film. Read more...
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Evgeny Kissin, Barbican HallSaturday, 03 March 2012
For more than 10 years now I have been waiting in vain for the pianist Evgeny Kissin to shatter the stereotyped image built around him by music critics who haven’t always liked what they’ve heard. Read more... |
Lindberg, Cowen, RLPO, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolFriday, 02 March 2012
There’s always a bit of a buzz around a premiere, even one which may seem slightly off-the-wall. Jan Sandström’s Echoes of Eternity is a concerto for two solo trombones – unusual in itself, given that there are precious few concerti for just one solo trombone – and symphony orchestra. Add to that the fact that one of the soloists is also the conductor and it’s easy to see that this piece is beginning to get complicated. Read more... |
Bell, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 23 February 2012
Despite the best attempts of Stephen Johnson’s programme notes to create synthesis from last night’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert, there was something rather smash and grab about the programming. It was as though Jurowski, suddenly inspired to play classical Supermarket Sweep, had emerged with a disparate trolley-load of Zemlinsky, Mozart and Szymanowski – oh, and the Brahms Violin Concerto. Read more... |
Mutter, London Symphony Orchestra, Previn, Barbican HallMonday, 20 February 2012
It’s over 30 years since André Previn left his post as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. But once you’re part of the LSO’s treasured ‘family of artists’, the orchestra never lets go, year upon year inviting you back for Christmas, New Year, weddings, bar mitzvahs, any occasion going. The same with the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter – briefly in the last decade Previn’s fifth wife, though they share the same platform with just as much ease now that they’re divorced. Read more... |
Roméo et Juliette: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Elder, Royal Festival HallSunday, 19 February 2012
It's one of the fundamental rules of concert-going that in any given season there will be one piece that trips you up. And that piece will always be by Berlioz. Read more... |
New York Philharmonic, Gilbert, BarbicanFriday, 17 February 2012
The problem with being the closest major European capital to the United States is that touring American orchestras always visit us first or last. When they hit London, they're exhausted. This was very noticeable the first time the New York Philharmonic dropped by with their new chief conductor Alan Gilbert a few years back. They were a pale and baggy-eyed lot compared to the alert team I'd seen and heard just a few months before in New York. Read more... |
Richard Goode, Royal Festival Hall (2012)Monday, 13 February 2012
You couldn't imagine a less likely acrobat than avuncular American Richard Goode. But when it comes to the piano, there's no mistaking it. A nippy little tumbler he undoubtedly is. Today we saw his fingers bounce about the keyboard like a troupe of prepubescent Romanian gymnasts. The sleepy Sunday concert that many had clearly hoped for was not going to be the narrative of this kinetic performance. Read more... |
Hough, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Alsop, Royal Festival HallThursday, 09 February 2012
Poor old Stephen Hough. The Liszt double. Again! Was he not at all Liszted out after last year's epic bicentenary? Were we not Liszted out by last year's epic bicentenary? Hough has been living, breathing and eating these two pieces for the past year and a half. The familiarity might have bred contempt. Amazingly it hasn't. In fact, all the prep work of last year appeared to make this performance of the first two piano concertos one of the most satisfying I've heard. Read more... |
Hughes, BBC Philharmonic, Gruber, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSaturday, 04 February 2012
“The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow.” And how! The BBC Phil’s composer/conductor H K “Nali” Gruber could not have timed the UK premiere of his Northwind Pictures better. We were ready targets for his shattering evocation of the wind with every device at the percussionists’ disposal and a large hand-cranked wind machine. The boys in the back row had a great night out. Read more... |
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