Classical Reviews
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Ono, Barbican review - feet on the ground, eyes to the skiesMonday, 21 October 2019
We have John Eliot Gardiner to thank for an unconventional diptych of Czech masterpieces in the London Symphony Orchestra's current season. He had to withdraw from last night's concert - he conducts Dvořák's Cello Concerto and Suk's "Asrael" Symphony on Thursday - but his replacement, Kazushi Ono, was no second-best. Read more... |
Miklós Perényi, Dénes Várjon, Wigmore Hall review – Beethoven in wonderfully safe handsMonday, 21 October 2019
"Revelatory": it’s one of those words which is now completely devalued through having been carelessly dropped into a thousand press releases. Read more... |
Glennie, Lubbe, Ticciati, O/Modernt, Kings Place review - a Pergolesi-based dudSaturday, 19 October 2019
Some of the greatest pieces of the string orchestra repertoire are based on pre-existing pieces: the fantasias by Tippett and Vaughan Williams, on Corelli and Tallis respectively, treat their starting material with invention and sweep, creating something new, bigger and better than their sources. But throughout Lera Auerbach’s Dialogues on Stabat Mater (after Pergolesi) last night I felt nothing other than the desire to hear the Pergolesi original, unadorned and unmeddled-with. Read more... |
Ehnes, Hallé, Gabel, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - happy unexpected discoveriesFriday, 18 October 2019
Changes from the artists originally advertised can bring some happy discoveries. Sir Mark Elder, though present in the audience to hear last night’s Hallé performance at the Bridgewater Hall, was still recovering from surgery and so did not conduct it, as he’d planned to when the season was announced. Read more... |
Dariescu, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Simonov, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - Soviet fear and loathingThursday, 17 October 2019
It remains some of the most terrifying music ever written. Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony - the composer’s portrayal of the fear and anxiety felt under Stalin's regime - is a horrifyingly brutal musical portrayal of life lived under a totalitarian reign. Read more... |
Zauberland, Linbury Theatre review - an adaptation that adds much and gains nothingWednesday, 16 October 2019
Dichterliebe is a song-cycle full of gaps, silences, absences. Where is the piano at the start of “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” when the voice enters first and so startlingly, ungrammatically alone? Where is the voice during the long piano postlude when the vocal line disappears but the singer continues to stand centre-stage? We even seem to join the cycle mid-conversation, unsure what has prompted the diffident, tentative harmonies with which it starts. Read more... |
Bevan, The Sixteen, Genesis Sixteen, Christophers, Barbican review - MacMillan transcends againTuesday, 15 October 2019
Verdi, Elgar, Janáček, John Adams - just four composers who achieved musical transcendence to religious texts as what convention would label non-believers, and so have no need of the "forgiveness" the Fátima zealots pray for their kind in James MacMillan's The Sun Danced. Read more... |
Verdi Requiem, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – beyond the big noiseMonday, 14 October 2019
You seldom expect to feel the breath of apocalypse and the terror of the grave amid the modestly rationalist architecture and passion-killer acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall. Read more... |
Brockes-Passion, Arcangelo, Cohen, Wigmore Hall review – hybrid HandelWednesday, 09 October 2019
Handel’s Brockes-Passion is a curious piece - sacred but not liturgical, and with a strong influence from opera, though it is a concert work. Solo voices predominate, and the singers assembled at Wigmore Hall were mostly fine. Read more... |
Cargill, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - luscious opening to a rich seasonTuesday, 08 October 2019
The conductor Thomas Søndergård turned 50 on Friday. Read more... |
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