Classical music
Six Brandenburgs: Six Commissions, Chamber Domaine, Malling Abbey review - metaphysical brillianceMonday, 25 April 2022
"Contemporary classical", for want of a better term, works best in concert as a cornucopia of shortish new works offering a healthy range of styles and voices. Add to the mix six of the most exhilarating and original chamber concertos ever, by no... Read more... |
Faust, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner, St Martin-in-the-Fields review – gusto and graceMonday, 25 April 2022
More than half a century has passed since John Eliot Gardiner’s choir and orchestras first won their historically-informed licence to thrill. A feverish Saturday night at St Martin-in-the-Fields proved that Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists... Read more... |
Moore, LSO, Zhang, Barbican review – virtuosity worn lightlyMonday, 25 April 2022
Xian Zhang is clearly a versatile conductor. In this concert, with the London Symphony Orchestra, she presented a fascinating strings work by Chinese composer Qigang Chen and a new trombone concerto by Dani Howard, all framed with favourites from... Read more... |
Hallé, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - valedictory Vaughan WilliamsFriday, 22 April 2022
The baton passed, metaphorically, to the Hallé last night in the Vaughan Williams symphony cycle shared between them and the BBC Philharmonic to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary. Literally, that baton was in the same hand as on the last date,... Read more... |
First Person: composer Michael Price on responding to Bach's Second Brandenburg ConcertoFriday, 22 April 2022
There are lots of ways that we respond to great works of art – intellectually and emotionally, then visually, aurally and even by taste and smell, depending on the art in question. I have a habit of screwing my eyes tight shut and bringing to mind a... Read more... |
Gillam, NYOS, Hasan, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - stunning variety from the new generationMonday, 18 April 2022
I expected the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s Usher Hall concert to be jam-packed with a joyful melee of admiring friends and relatives. This is a vast orchestra of over 100, and it wouldn’t take that many aunts and uncles to fill the Usher’... Read more... |
Bach and Pärt St John Passions, Voces8, ECO, Cadogan Hall / Gesualdo Six, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - contrasting Easter storiesSaturday, 16 April 2022
Having not heard a Passion live for several years I decided to do two in close succession, to compare pieces from different ends of the musical spectrum.Bach’s 1724 setting, a masterpiece of the baroque, dramatises the story through emotional... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Bounce, bluster and BlätterSaturday, 16 April 2022
JS Bach: Magnificat, CPE Bach: Magnificat Gaechinger Cantorey/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus Music)Coupling this pair of Magnificat settings on a single CD makes so much sense. JS Bach’s 1723 Magnificat is wonderfully served here, Hans-... Read more... |
Bournemouth SO, Karabits, Lighthouse, Poole review - more voices from the eastTuesday, 12 April 2022
The last of this season’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert series Voices from the East featured music from Azerbaijan with Kirill Karabits focusing on works by the contemporary composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and her teacher Kara Karayev.Born in... Read more... |
BBC Philharmonic, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester - passionate advocacy for Vaughan WilliamsMonday, 11 April 2022
At first sight, Vaughan Williams’ Second and Seventh Symphonies might seem to have a lot in common. Both are quite programmatic and pictorial, the second (the London) including music that might have finished up as a tone poem, and the seventh (... Read more... |
Kang, National Symphony Orchestra, Bihlmaier, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - hats off, another top conductorSaturday, 09 April 2022
Dublin is feted as the city of the word, peaking on Bloomsday, 16 June, in celebration of Ulysses’ centenary. Yet its concert and opera scene is broadening in brilliance. Had I known before yesterday that the vivacious Peter Whelan and his Irish... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Escalators, dead leaves and a sixth-century bardSaturday, 02 April 2022
Eric Nathan: Missing Words (New Focus Recordings)“Inspired by words from Schottenfreude by Ben Schott” reads this double album’s tagline, a high-concept project based on Schott’s 2013 lexicon of newly-invented German compound words. Words like... Read more... |
