Classical music
Ablogin, SCO, Emelyanychev, City Halls, Glasgow review - a happy 50th birthdayTuesday, 23 January 2024
The mood was indeed celebratory at Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday evening for the second of two concerts celebrating the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 50th birthday. It opened with a suite from Figaro Gets a Divorce, a comic opera written by composer... Read more... |
Gerhaher, Huber, Wigmore Hall review - new colours from old favouritesMonday, 22 January 2024
After a frozen week, the sensual languor of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été promised warm respite at the Wigmore Hall – especially when delivered by house favourite Christian Gerhaher and his peerless pianist, Gerold Huber.Yet the Bavarian baritone saved... Read more... |
Sakamoto's Kagami, Tin Drum, Roundhouse review - haunting virtual reality performance from late composerSaturday, 20 January 2024
This mixed reality concert is simultaneously a dimension juggling conundrum, a philosophical puzzle, and a fascinating insight into what the future might hold. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto – whose influences included Bach, John Cage and David Bowie –... Read more... |
Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall review - every note of Brahms’ late genius carefully weighedSaturday, 20 January 2024
Successful performances, conductor Robin Ticciati once suggested to me, are when “the head has a conversation with the heart”. The same goes, surely, for great music, though from personal experience one has to reach a certain age to find that true... Read more... |
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martin, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff review - a host of horns in the wild woodsMonday, 15 January 2024
There were a lot of horns on display in the BBC NOW’s latest concert in Cardiff’s Hoddinott Hall. Brahms’s Second Symphony has four of them, and so does the Elegy for Brahms that Parry wrote on hearing of Brahms’s death in 1897. Gavin Higgins’s Horn... Read more... |
First Person: contralto Hilary Summers on going beyond her baroque and contemporary comfort zonesMonday, 15 January 2024
Back in the summer of 2020 when the arts industry was largely dormant and many professional singers were either moodily knocking back the gin or uploading poor quality phone videos of themselves bellowing Puccini arias from their doorsteps, I... Read more... |
SCO, Ilias-Kadesha, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - Eastern promise sputters outMonday, 15 January 2024
Violinist Jonas Ilias-Kadesha was placed front and centre of the publicity for this concert. This is his first season concert with the SCO, though back in 2019 he stood in for an indisposed soloist at short notice for one of their European tours.... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Smocks, sins and sea swellSaturday, 13 January 2024
LICHT: 800 Years of German Lieder Anna Lucia Richter (mezzo-soprano), Ammiel Bushakevitz (hurdy gurdy, harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano, piano) (SWR2/Challenge Classics)LICHT, 800 Years of German Lieder, from Anna Lucia Richter and Ammiel... Read more... |
Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall review - epic heaven and hellTuesday, 09 January 2024
With rapid, sleight-of-hand flicks between calm assurance and demonic agitation, Boris Giltburg turned in a coherent and epic recital that won’t be surpassed in 2024. Most pianists would quake simply at the thought of performing the four Chopin... Read more... |
Best of 2023: Classical CDsSaturday, 30 December 2023
There’s still a market for classical music, whether you stream, download or get your fix from your local classical CD shop. Universal’s acquisition of the independent Hyperion label worried many listeners early in 2023, but the fact that... Read more... |
Newby, Middleton, Wigmore Hall review - archly subversive interpretation of traditional themesFriday, 29 December 2023
To understand the ambition of baritone James Newby, it helps to look up his video of Handel’s “Cara Pianta” from Apollo e Dafne. It would be remarkable by any standards for the fact that his head becomes gradually submerged by water while he’s... Read more... |
Best of 2023: Classical music concertsThursday, 28 December 2023
However dark the future may seem for UK arts funding, each year begins with a beacon of light, passed on to shine twice more, in the Easter and summer holidays: the ever more resourceful and generous concertgiving of the National Youth Orchestra of... Read more... |
