Classical music
Prom 9, Finch, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Matiakh review - thrilling, conceptually fascinating eveningFriday, 22 July 2022
The spirit of Sir Richard Burton loomed large over the Royal Albert Hall last night – a man who wrote about everything from falconry to erotica and whose death-defying expeditions took him across the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Between... Read more... |
Prom 8, Kozhukhin, BBCSO, Stasevska review - Russian classics meet contemporary IcelandThursday, 21 July 2022
Russia meets Iceland: not the most obvious of juxtapositions. But the connection between the four composers featured in Prom 8 is to be found in their filmic approaches: the two contemporary Icelanders are both better known as media composers than... Read more... |
Prom 7, Dido and Aeneas, La Nuova Musica review - bold and original from the startWednesday, 20 July 2022
How do you celebrate one of epic poetry’s richest female characters, a queen renowned across the Middle East and North Africa for being as politically powerful as she was magnetic? For Nahum Tate, the librettist for Dido and Aeneas, the curious... Read more... |
Prom 6, BBC Philharmonic, Davis review - a bracing pair of British symphoniesWednesday, 20 July 2022
The ferocity of Tuesday's heat wasn’t reflected in the pleasantly air-conditioned Royal Albert Hall – the coolest I had felt all day – but was in the intense playing of the BBC Philharmonic, in a pair of knotty and urgent British symphonies.The... Read more... |
Gillam, Brodsky Quartet, Manchester Camerata, Buxton International Festival 2022 review - a freshness in classic ElgarWednesday, 20 July 2022
It’s an ill heatwave that brings nobody any good, and Buxton International Festival’s decision to move its highlight concert, by Manchester Camerata with Jess Gillam and the Brodsky Quartet as their guests, from the Buxton Octagon to St John’s... Read more... |
Prom 5, Power, BBC Philharmonic, Mena review - detail and breadthTuesday, 19 July 2022
I had anticipated a sweltering evening at the Albert Hall. Sadly, though, the heatwave prevented me from even getting there – buckled rails or some similar problem led to the cancellation of my train. So this review is of the Radio 3 broadcast,... Read more... |
Prom 2, Walker, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - sensuousness and subtlety in excelsisMonday, 18 July 2022
Had Claudio Abbado conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a major Elgar orchestral work – and to my knowledge he never saw the light about the composer’s due place among the European greats – it might have sounded something like last night’s “Enigma”... Read more... |
Prom 1, Verdi's Requiem, BBCSO, Oramo review - introspective sorrow and consolation between the blazesSaturday, 16 July 2022
Any sensitive festival planner knows to begin the return to a new normal with something soft and elegiac – reflecting on all we’ve lost and mourned these past two years, as well as what we’re facing in the world now. Just over a fortnight ago, at... Read more... |
Mad Song, Ballance, High Barnet Chamber Music Festival review - Reich towers over the restSaturday, 16 July 2022
Perhaps 2021 was not the most propitious time to launch a new festival, but composer and conductor Josh Ballance did it anyway, and the High Barnet Chamber Music Festival has returned in 2022 – as it will, I hope, in 2023 and beyond. Still modestly... Read more... |
Classical CDs: sound effects, football teams and waterfallsSaturday, 16 July 2022
Gail Kubik: Symphony Concertante, Gerald McBoing Boing Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP Sound)Gail Kubik (1914-1984) should really be remembered for writing the score to William Wyler’s 1955 noir The Desperate Hours, but... Read more... |
BBC Proms 2022 preview - big is beautiful againThursday, 14 July 2022
Remember how, back in the summer of 2020, we all wondered if large-scale symphonies would be back in the repertoire any time soon? I pessimistically predicted a decade of slow orchestral reconstruction.Yet right at the beginning of the 2021-2 season... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2022 - body and soul in perfect balanceWednesday, 13 July 2022
For once, a festival theme has meaning. “Tra la carne e il cielo”, “Between flesh and heaven”, is how Pier Paolo Pasolini, the centenary of whose birth we mark this year, defined his early experience of hearing the Siciliana movement of Bach’s First... Read more... |
