Classical Reviews
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, RFH review - elegy and ecstasyThursday, 18 May 2023
Standing ovations on the less-than-passionate South Bank can have a dutiful, grudging quality. However, I’ve seldom heard more heartfelt ardour at the Royal Festival Hall than the acclaim for Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra last night. Rightly so? Beyond all doubt. Read more... |
Ein Deutsches Requiem, SCO, Emelyanychev, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - immaculate, but lacking soulWednesday, 17 May 2023
From the outset, it was clear that this would be a performance of immaculate sonic architecture. Over a soft, deep, and breathy organ pedal the first utterings of the strings sounded tentative, almost improvised, like an artist making the first daubs on a vast empty canvas. Read more... |
Kozhukhin, BBCSSO, Menezes, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - shimmering Saariaho and moody MendelssohnTuesday, 16 May 2023
How apt that on her first visit to Scotland, Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes would lead the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mendelssohn's Third Symphony, the “Scottish”. Though there may not be many particularly "Scottish" sounding melodies in this piece, its overall sound conjures up the brooding moods of the Scottish landscape. Read more... |
Concerto 1700, L’Apothéose, St John's Smith Square review - rare Spanish treasuresMonday, 15 May 2023
Escapees from Eurovision in Westminster on Saturday night might have discovered that a continent-wide enthusiasm for crowd-pleasing international styles arose long before the age of glitzy pop. Two accomplished Spanish groups performed at St John’s Smith Square within this year’s London Festival of Baroque Music. Both came with an attractive, unfamiliar 18th-century repertoire from their homeland. Read more... |
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Academy of Ancient Music, Milton Court review - radiant and full of lifeFriday, 12 May 2023
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is the opposite of a jukebox musical. So fertile, so overflowing was the 22-year-old Handel’s musical imagination, that his very first oratorio, composed during his time in Rome, would become a chest full of music the composer returned to again and again, pilfering and self-plagiarising over the ensuing decades. All those hits from Rodelinda, from Agrippina, Partenope, Rinaldo: he wrote them here first. Read more... |
Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy, QEH review - piano magicians conduct themselves beautifullyThursday, 11 May 2023
Shortly before his death, Rachmaninov proposed recording the two-piano version of his swansong Symphonic Dances with Vladimir Horowitz. A curse on that RCA executive who turned the offer down. What amazes is how much pianistic magic can make up for the orchestral wizardry of the more familiar incarnation. The Kolesnikov-Tsoy duo is the one to redisover it now, and they did the same for Mikhail Pletnev’s recreative genius in music from Prokofiev’s Cinderella. Read more... |
Bartlett, National Symphony Orchestra, Weilerstein, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - edgy darkness, blazing light and high campSaturday, 06 May 2023
Who’d have thought Florence Price, Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Brahms would all fit the (unspoken) theme of 1930s America? Brahms made the bill by virtue of Schoenberg’s 1937 arrangement of the C minor Piano Quartet, so outlandish and camp that you’d be tempted to credit Stokowski as the orchestrator. Like Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini, it needs vertiginous audacity: that came in spades from conductor Joshua Weilerstein and pianist Martin James Bartlett. Read more... |
Prohaska, Hallé, Bloxham, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a sure hand at the helmFriday, 05 May 2023
Getting on for 27 years ago, Thomas Adès’ These Premises Are Alarmed was one of the pieces commissioned by the Hallé for a premiere in the opening series of concerts at the new Bridgewater Hall, conducted by Kent Nagano. Read more... |
Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - superlative SchubertMonday, 01 May 2023
Paul Lewis secured his reputation as a leading advocate of the Viennese Classical repertoire with two releases of late Schubert sonatas on Harmonia Mundi. That was 20 years ago, but he returned to Schubert in 2022, with a release of earlier sonatas, music that requires more interpretive personality, something that Lewis can always provide. Read more... |
Akugbo, Harper, The Jago, Dalston review - revelatory pairing of trumpet and harpMonday, 01 May 2023
For its 22nd concert the hugely successful initiative, Through The Noise, took its audience to The Jago in Dalston, the live music venue formerly known as Passing Clouds. Here, on a stage more familiar with reggae, blues and Afrobeat, 25-year-old classical trumpeter Aaron Akugbo joined forces with harpist Milo Harper (pictured below) for a series of sultry, haunting numbers that explored the possibilities of this unusual pairing. Read more... |
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