Classical music
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)Saturday, 04 May 2024![]() As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he inspired. Now is a good time to recall those properly to mind, to listen to his huge discography, and... Read more... |
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - meeting a musical communicatorFriday, 03 May 2024![]() Kahchun Wong, the Hallé’s principal conductor from the coming autumn season, presided in the Bridgewater Hall for the first time yesterday since the announcement of his appointment.It was in the last of the four “Rush Hour” concerts recently... Read more... |
Guildhall School Gold Medal 2024, Barbican review - quirky-wonderful programme ending in an awardThursday, 02 May 2024![]() While the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra were performing Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie – weirdly, despite its size and difficulty, a repertoire staple – over at the Royal Festival Hall, their Guildhall School counterparts presented a... Read more... |
Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journeysTuesday, 30 April 2024![]() As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The founder-director (in 1990) of Bach Collegium Japan, a distinguished harpsichordist-organist as well as one... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Swans, hamlets and bossa novaSaturday, 27 April 2024![]() Chopin: Études op.10 & op.25 Yunchan Lim (Decca)Chopin Nicolas van Poucke (Night Dreamer)I’m reviewing these two Chopin discs by a pair of young men together, even though there are lots of differences between their playing, and the way the... Read more... |
Christian Pierre La Marca, Yaman Okur, St Martin-in-The-Fields review - engagingly subversive pairing falls shortThursday, 25 April 2024![]() The French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca confesses that – like so many classical musicians – he was at a loss during lockdown as to how to develop his musical career. Then, at a recording for a TV show, he met the street dancer Yaman Okur, who... Read more... |
Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall review - electrifying teamworkWednesday, 24 April 2024![]() Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/her/their generation”. From my side, I’m allowed to use it occasionally: surely Timothy Ridout is the... Read more... |
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - enchantment in Mozart and StraussTuesday, 23 April 2024![]() Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital. In her native France, and in the rest of Europe, she has gathered ecstatic reviews for her performance... Read more... |
Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - three flavours of ViennaMonday, 22 April 2024![]() Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming from Vienna.For a start, there’s the classical tradition of Mozart, Beethoven and those who aimed to be... Read more... |
Watts, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Bignamini, Barbican review - blazing French masterpiecesSaturday, 20 April 2024![]() Anyone who’d booked to hear soprano Sally Matthews or to witness the rapid progress of conductor Daniele Rustioni – the initial draw for me – could not have been disappointed in their late-stage replacements. Elizabeth Watts is as much of a national... Read more... |
Bell, Perahia, ASMF Chamber Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - joy in teamworkWednesday, 17 April 2024![]() All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated their intention to reign for ever and ever. Those very words as set by Handel in his “Hallelujah” Chorus were treated fugally by... Read more... |
First Persons: composers Colin Alexander and Héloïse Werner on fantasy in guided improvisationWednesday, 17 April 2024![]() For tonight’s performance at Milton Court, the nuanced and delicate tones of strings, voices, harmonium and chamber organ will merge and mingle together to tell tales of a rain-speckled landscape, luck and misfortune, forgotten valour, daily... Read more... |
