19th century
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Desyatnikov, Glière, TchaikovskyFriday, 02 September 2011
We head east this week - new pieces by a contemporary Russian composer, and a bargain box set showcasing the flamboyant orchestral music of a neglected Russian. And a famous viola player leads a young Moscow orchestra in electrifying accounts of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bayreuth: Wagner in the LaboratorySaturday, 13 August 2011
Richard Wagner has probably only himself to blame if his operas have become a laboratory for the testing-to-destruction of the intellectual preoccupations of that Opera Führer of our time, the stage director. Wagner it was, after all, who... Read more... |
Caractacus, Worcester Cathedral, Three Choirs FestivalThursday, 11 August 2011
“The text of Britain’s teaching, the message of the free…”. No, not the Last Night of the Proms or the Olympic Games ahead of time. This is the final chorus of Elgar’s concert-length cantata Caractacus, which was given a vigorous work-out in this... Read more... |
Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair, BBC FourWednesday, 03 August 2011
Is there a place for the travelling fun fair any more? Static attractions like Alton Towers and Thorpe Park have rides that are bigger, grander, more varied and scarier than anything a traditional, transient fair could ever transport. All the Fun of... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Les Talens Lyriques/ BBC Philharmonic, NosedaMonday, 01 August 2011
According to Classic FM’s managing director Darren Henley there are many people who find the term “chamber music” offputting, if not downright intimidating. Perhaps the best explanation of the genre comes from a musicologist who has termed it “the... Read more... |
Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake, National GalleryThursday, 28 July 2011
We are still acknowledging our 21st-century debts to the energy, curiosity, determination and passion for discovery of a host of Victorian polymaths, and here is another. Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865) was a painter, scholar, author, collector and... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Byrd, Cage and RossiniFriday, 22 July 2011
This week's chronologically varied selection includes instrumental music written by one of the giants of Elizabethan music and a baffling, beguiling work composed by a 20th-century maverick, inspired by a visit to a Japanese garden. There's also a... Read more... |
Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes, National GalleryWednesday, 20 July 2011
The National Gallery has in recent years made a speciality of examining the hitherto unexamined. Just for starters, a surprise hit some years ago was Spanish Still Lifes, 2007 saw Renoir Landscapes (who knew?), last year there was the ravishing... Read more... |
The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution, BBC TwoSunday, 17 July 2011
Who could argue that television isn’t a great medium for learning about art? In its pared-down, visually literate way it delivers what dull, theory-laden extrapolations often can’t (if only because artists don’t think that way when they make things... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cheltenham: Seven Concerts in Two DaysSunday, 10 July 2011
For so many days a year, Cheltenham's Regency symmetry and conservative values totter and buckle as they veer dangerously towards relative festive liberalism. As I sliced into one of the four annual beanfeasts, the Cheltenham Music Festival, it... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Liszt, SibeliusFriday, 08 July 2011
This week’s reviews include a generous Liszt anthology played by one of the 20th century’s most fondly remembered pianists. There’s a reissued box of Beethoven symphonies performed on modern instruments by one of the classiest European orchestras.... Read more... |
La Rondine, Opera Holland ParkWednesday, 06 July 2011
With opera houses in Britain now ringing to the four-letter cries of Anna Nicole and Two Boys (not to mention the rather more elderly, but no less explicit utterances of Le grand macabre) verbal taboos it seems are a thing of the past. Yet one word... Read more... |
