Classical Reviews
Carnac, BCMG, Kemp, Music@Malling Festival - lyrical Turnage frames abstruse fanciesTuesday, 28 September 2021
Is there any composer alive who writes more luminously bittersweet elegies than Mark-Anthony Turnage? Taking key lines from memorialising poets through the ages as inspiration, he knows that instrumental phrases must sing, sometimes to invisible words, as well as dance if they’re to pierce the heart. Read more... |
Iestyn Davies, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place review - Elizabethans and extraterrestrialsMonday, 27 September 2021
Music in London has faced down plagues, puritans, philistines and planners over the four centuries spanned by the Aurora Orchestra’s season-opener at Kings Place on Saturday. This concert in the venue’s “London Unwrapped” strand filled its main hall without distancing for the first time since the capital’s (and the world’s) latest pandemic struck. Read more... |
Nicola Benedetti, Barbican Hall review – from Bach to the Highlands via New OrleansFriday, 24 September 2021
If a standard-sized recital hall can be a lonely place for a solo violinist, playing an auditorium of Barbican dimensions must feel like crossing a desert under pitiless spotlight sun. Happily, Nicola Benedetti’s prowess as a communicator means that she made those trackless wastes shrink into a shared garden where she, and we, explored her instrument’s many kinds of bloom. Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Terfel, RPO, Philharmonia Chorus, Petrenko, RAH review - an anniversary feastWednesday, 22 September 2021
75 years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it’s sobering to reflect that without this one person’s hubris and sheer cantankerousness, British musical life would be a whole lot worse off. Beecham, who fortuitously combined musical flair with force of personality and the inheritance of a pharmaceutical fortune, tended to start orchestras of his own after falling out with other ones. Read more... |
Black British Musical Theatre 1900-1950, Wigmore Hall review – a disappointing missed opportunityWednesday, 22 September 2021
The Wigmore Hall is a bastion of white musicians playing the music of white composers to a largely white audience and it is to the credit of the management that, in seeking to diversify, it staged this lecture-recital on the history of black musicals in Britain from 1900-1950 in a main evening slot. Read more... |
Esther Yoo, Yekwon Sunwoo, Wigmore Hall review - Korean duo needs time to developTuesday, 21 September 2021
The duo partnership between violinist Esther Yoo and pianist Yekwon Sunwoo is still at a very early stage. Read more... |
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - a glimpse into Bruckner’s workshopMonday, 20 September 2021
For most Bruckner fans, the multiple editions and revisions of his symphonies are a problem. But Simon Rattle sees it differently; for him every edition offers more music to explore. Read more... |
Leeds International Piano Competition Finals, Leeds Town Hall review - a hi-tech, low carbon musical celebrationMonday, 20 September 2021
It’s easy to forget that what you see in a competition final isn’t always the full story, the jury members’ votes in this case based on what had gone on in the earlier rounds. Read more... |
Our Future in Your Hands, Peckham School Choirs, Multi-Story Orchestra, Stark, Bold Tendencies review - blazing community epicThursday, 16 September 2021
What a way for the Multi-Story Orchestra, conductor Christopher Stark and composer Kate Whitley to celebrate 10 years of pioneering activity in Peckham and beyond. Read more... |
Last Night of the Proms, BBC review - a feast of unusual morsels in a traditional wrapperMonday, 13 September 2021
In some deep imagined past, watching the Last Night of the Proms on telly was one of those national collective experiences, like watching the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. Read more... |
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