Classical music
Van der Heijden, Hallé, New, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - rising to challengesFriday, 22 October 2021
The youthful New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New and British cellist Laura van der Heijden between them set the Hallé quite a challenge at this concert.The music was all written in the past 75 years or so – by classical measures that’s pretty... Read more... |
First Person: ethnomusicologist Shumaila Hemani on global musical traditions and Concert for AfghanistanFriday, 22 October 2021
In early 2020, the year that soon saw COVID-19 lockdown, I served on the music faculty for Semester at Sea, Spring 2020 voyage, where I taught self-designed courses on global music cultures as well as a course called Soundscapes. This course... Read more... |
Colin Currie Group, RFH review - Reich premiere explores fresh territoryWednesday, 20 October 2021
Single-composer programmes can be a bit dicey and there was a bit of trepidation approaching this one as Steve Reich is not a composer of massive range: he has been diligently tilling the same patch of soil since the 1970s. But alongside some Reich-... Read more... |
Clements Prize, Conway Hall review - newly-written string trios in competitionMonday, 18 October 2021
The Conway Hall in London has hosted chamber music concerts since it was built in 1929, and for 40 years this included a composition prize, in abeyance since the late 1970s. This has now been revived by the hall’s enterprising director of music,... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Rediscovered orchestral jazz, natural trumpets and non-seasonal chamber musicSaturday, 16 October 2021
Leo Sowerby: Paul Whiteman Commissions & other early works Andy Baker Orchestra, Avalon String Quartet (Cedille)Chicago’s Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) is remembered chiefly as a prolific composer of sacred scores, a Pullitzer-Prize winning... Read more... |
Tamestit, LSO, Ticciati, LSO St Luke's review - viola as chameleon, palpitating BrahmsFriday, 15 October 2021
Returning to LSO St Luke’s, formerly a beacon in the darkness of semi-lockdown for the lucky few allowed to feast upon the London Symphony Orchestra from the gallery, felt the same, yet different, like so much since most of the rules were relaxed.... Read more... |
Two-Piano Gala, Kings Place review - five pianists, two pianos, too many piecesMonday, 11 October 2021
I’ve always loved the sound of two-piano music: the amazing range of available textures, the interplay of parts and the sense of collaboration between soloists. All were on display in Saturday’s Two-Piano Gala, part of the London Piano Festival at... Read more... |
Gabriela Montero, Kings Place review - improvising to a Chaplin classic is the icing on a zesty cakeSaturday, 09 October 2021
As the Statue of Liberty appears in Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, our improvising pianist proclaims “The Star-Spangled Banner”, only for it to slide dangerously. The passengers on the ship taking them to a new life are brutally cordoned by the... Read more... |
Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - together againSaturday, 09 October 2021
The joint enterprise of soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, with Manchester Camerata, in recording publicly all Mozart’s piano concertos alongside his opera overtures – with the project theme “Mozart, made in Manchester” –... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Two Moors Festival - birdsong, gongs and nocturnes in Dartmoor churchesThursday, 07 October 2021
First came the difficult decision: whether to experience performances by great musicians whose work I already knew in the second, Exmoor-based weekend of the Two Moors Festival, or to go for enticing programmes by others whom I’d never experienced... Read more... |
Geniušas, SCO, Emelyanychev, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - glorious return to a much-missed venueSaturday, 02 October 2021
This concert almost had me in tears before a single note was played because it marked (joy!) the first classical concert to take place in the Usher Hall since it was shut in March 2020. She has been closed for eighteen long months, but she hasn’t... Read more... |
Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - the really big orchestra is back for cosmic StraussFriday, 01 October 2021
Two suns, two moons, two Philharmonia leaders sharing a front desk, two aspirational giants among Richard Strauss's symphonic poems bringing the number of players, in the second half, to 134. Who’d have thought we’d be witnessing such phenomena when... Read more... |
