Classical Reviews
Sean Shibe, Wigmore Hall online review - persuasive and poignantWednesday, 24 February 2021
Returning to the Wigmore Hall for another socially distanced concert, Edinburgh-born guitarist Sean Shibe brought a programme of moving, often melancholy music, apt for these still locked-down times. He opened with a trio of works by John Dowland written originally for lute. Read more... |
Hughes, Manchester Collective, Lakeside Arts online review - creating the occasionMonday, 22 February 2021
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most performances just now, was in an empty hall, with its slightly strange "empty" acoustic affecting the spoken word as the artists introduced their music. Read more... |
Coote, Blackshaw, Fiennes, Wigmore Hall online review – lonely hearts club bandSunday, 21 February 2021
Why, in Lieder singing above all, should an outpouring of deep feeling so frighten critics? Alice Coote’s unabashed emotionalism as a recitalist can sometimes bring out the worst in the stiff-upper-lip brigade, as reactions to her high-impact Winterreise (last given at the Wigmore prior to the current lockdown) revealed. Read more... |
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer online review - Mahler movements for the fishSaturday, 20 February 2021
In verses from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) set by Mahler as a song, later adapted for the scherzo of his Second Symphony, St Anthony of Padua sermonizes on repentance to the fish, who all listen politely and then carry on behaving as they did before. Read more... |
Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall online review - the joyful wisdom of the GoldbergsWednesday, 17 February 2021
Aside from the happy accident of longevity, something that set Bach and Handel and Telemann apart from their contemporaries was fluency. I’m speaking here of musical rather than verbal tongues: the least polyglot of them was Bach, with his command of four languages, German, Latin, French and Italian, in decreasing degrees of facility. Read more... |
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Emelyanychev online review – versatile virtuosity from EdinburghMonday, 08 February 2021
Seated at the harpsichord, Maxim Emelyanychev introduces this concert in charmingly fractured English. Read more... |
David Webb's 'Winter Journey', Wigmore Hall online review - an epic sharedSaturday, 30 January 2021
The bleak isolation and lonely angst felt in Schubert’s Winterreise is only too appropriate for a lockdown January. However, one positive to shine from this gloom is tenor David Webb’s own "Winter Journey". Read more... |
The Hermes Experiment, Wigmore Hall online review - innovative and upliftingWednesday, 27 January 2021
Fast making a name for themselves in contemporary chamber music, The Hermes Experiment players here give a wonderful debut recital at the Wigmore Hall, With a range of pieces as eclectic as their line up – harp, soprano, double bass and clarinet – the quartet perform a multifarious array of works, from Lili Boulanger’s... Read more... |
Christian Blackshaw, Wigmore Hall online review - pure as the driven snowTuesday, 26 January 2021
From a distance, the pianist Christian Blackshaw bears an uncanny resemblance to Franz Liszt, silver hair swept back à la 19th century. At the piano, though, you could scarcely find two more different musicians. There seems not to be a flamboyant bone in Blackshaw’s body. Read more... |
Apartment House, Wigmore Hall online review - introspective music for isolated timesMonday, 18 January 2021
Another year, another lockdown. Though I have little doubt this was not the way most us of hoped to start 2021, we can at least be grateful that we’re not suffering quite the same drought of live music we experienced back in March. Read more... |
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