Classical music
Classical CDs: Five-pointed stars, unspecified instrumentation and talented siblingsSaturday, 10 September 2022
Brahms Lieder Anna Lucia Richter (mezzo-soprano), Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano) (Pentatone)Ein süßes Deingedenken: A Tender Memory of Thee – Lieder by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn Kateryna Kasper (soprano), Dmitry Ablogin (piano) (TYXArt)These two... Read more... |
Prom 69, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner review - shock, fervour and total focusThursday, 08 September 2022
Back in 1990, John Eliot Gardiner with his Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and world-class singers set the South Bank alight with revelatory concert performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito. Now he's done it again for an... Read more... |
The Goldberg Variations, De Keersmaeker, Kolesnikov, Sadler's Wells review - keyboard harmony and atonal danceWednesday, 07 September 2022
Jean-Guihen Queyras and five dancers of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas company in the Bach Cello Suites was a thing of constantly evolving wonder. So too is Pavel Kolesnikov’s ongoing dialogue with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, different every... Read more... |
Prom 64, Beethoven's Last Three Piano Sonatas, Schiff review - morning gloryMonday, 05 September 2022
In more ways than one, Beethoven’s last piano sonatas can make the listener lose track of time. It’s not just the delirious freedom with rhythm, accents, signatures and note-values that the ageing, afflicted composer of Op. 109, 110 and 111... Read more... |
Prom 62, Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko review - hallucinogenic night's journey into daySunday, 04 September 2022
Match the most multi-timbred, flexible orchestra in the world with the iridescent peak of symphonic mastery, and you have an assured winner of a Prom. Yet not even Kirill Petrenko’s previous London performance of Mahler’s Seventh with the Bavarian... Read more... |
Prom 61, Cabell, Chineke! Voices and Orchestra, Edusei review - a thrilling, fiercely rational Beethoven 9Saturday, 03 September 2022
Last night’s riveting, meticulous account of Beethoven’s Ninth from the Chineke! Orchestra was as daring in its restraint as it was thrillingly revelatory. Right from the subtle shimmer of the first movement’s opening cascades it was clear that this... Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Friends, Bold Tendencies review - intimate tenderness under a car-park roofSaturday, 03 September 2022
When I worked in the Music Discount Centre decades ago, and non-stop CDs in the background were ordained, a customer remarked wryly of eight Bayreuth Festival horns playing Wagner “very crepuscular”. Five cellists playing Bach and Villa-Lobos as... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Horn player Sarah Willis on returning to CubaSaturday, 03 September 2022
Berlin Philharmonic Horn player Sarah Willis’s Mozart y Mambo caused a stir in 2020, its mixture of Mozart and traditional Cuban music making it a bestselling crossover disc.Two years on and the second volume has just been released, the sessions... Read more... |
First Person: Geoffrey Paterson on conducting the London Sinfonietta and working with Marius NesetFriday, 02 September 2022
By my count, tomorrow’s Proms première of Marius Neset’s jazz epic Geyser will be my 51st performance conducting the London Sinfonietta. It’s a tally that has crept up over the last decade, and is something I could hardly have dreamed of more than... Read more... |
Prom 59, The Dream of Gerontius, Clayton, Barton, Platt, LPO, Gardner review - most sure in all its waysThursday, 01 September 2022
Asked which work suits capricious Albert Hall acoustics best, I’d say Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, partly due to the choral billows – this year there’s been an extra thrill about massed choirs – but also because the Kensington colosseum... Read more... |
Prom 57, Bach Mass in B Minor, OAE, Butt review - passion and precisionTuesday, 30 August 2022
A strong team of musical chefs can blend and spice Bach’s mighty Mass in B Minor in a variety of different ways, and still prepare a feast to savour. We don’t know exactly why Bach felt compelled to bundle his decades of genius into this late... Read more... |
TUKS Camerata, Voces8 Live from London online review - a diverse choral selectionTuesday, 30 August 2022
The Voces8 Live from London, now in its seventh iteration, has progressed from streaming choral chamber music from an empty studio to an 80-strong visiting choir in a packed Christ Church, Spitalfields. In doing this the festival has retained its... Read more... |
