Bach
BBC Proms: Tetzlaff, BBCSO, GardnerMonday, 08 August 2011
This year’s Choral Sundays at the Proms are a wonderfully mixed bag. Mighty choral touchstones are represented by Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both the Verdi and Mozart Requiems and Beethoven Missa solemnis, but there’s also an enticing strand of... Read more... |
BBC Proms: National Youth Orchestra, Jurowski/ Nigel KennedySunday, 07 August 2011
Youth was everywhere to be seen at the Proms last night. Whether in the massed ranks of Britain’s National Youth Orchestra, soloist Ben Grosvenor (even younger than the precocious Benjamin Britten when he debuted his own Piano Concerto in 1938),... Read more... |
Alina Ibragimova, Quay Brothers, Wilton's Music HallWednesday, 27 July 2011
Nine out of 10 attempts to feed an audience's visual responses to abstract music are doomed to failure; a great communicator will always conjure stronger pictures in the listener's mind. And there's no doubt that young violinist Alina Ibragimova... Read more... |
Music and Maths: A Yardstick to the StarsThursday, 30 June 2011
The history of maths and music is the history of early Greek philosophy, medieval astronomy, of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the two World Wars. While mathematics at its purest may be an abstraction, the quest for its proofs is deeply and... Read more... |
Joanna MacGregor, Wigmore Hall/ Sol Picó, Sadler's Wells TheatreSunday, 26 June 2011
The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor... Read more... |
Lang Lang, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 18 May 2011
There must be at least 100 more interesting pianists in the concert world than Lang Lang, but perhaps he is just the best publicist around, because nothing else can explain why such a vacuous display as he gave last night at the Royal Festival Hall... Read more... |
CD: Marius Neset – Golden XplosionWednesday, 20 April 2011
For the sheer multiplicity of event, the resplendently rich palette of sound and the incendiary aural thrill it detonates, Marius Neset's Golden Xplosion is aptly named. This second solo album from the 25-year-old Norwegian sax player and composer... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, The Bach Choir, Royal Festival HallSunday, 10 April 2011
As Handel’s Messiah is to Christmas so the music of Bach is to Lent. Every Passiontide churches and concert halls are flooded with performances that include everything from dainty consort renderings of the St John Passion to choral societies... Read more... |
Murray Perahia, Barbican HallWednesday, 30 March 2011
Last night Murray Perahia played Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin, and we heard, quite simply, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin. Nothing more need be said, if one follows the Cordelia principle to love, and be silent.Still,... Read more... |
CD: Nick van Bloss - Goldberg VariationsSaturday, 26 March 2011
If you’ve not already read theartsdesk interview with Nick van Bloss, have a look now. Then hopefully you’ll be persuaded to buy his autobiography and this CD. The sleeve notes refer to Van Bloss’s fascination with Glenn Gould’s iconic 1983 second... Read more... |
Goldberg Variations, Fretwork, St George's BristolSaturday, 05 March 2011
There are few more beautiful sounds on this planet than a consort of viols well played. Like a quiet conversation overheard from across the room, it combines intimacy and secrecy, together with a kind of conspiratorial subtlety of feeling –... Read more... |
Interview: Pianist Nick Van BlossWednesday, 09 February 2011
A new recording of The Goldberg Variations is now available, by Nick Van Bloss. In the annals of British pianism, it’s not quite a name to be conjured with. Or not yet. Until he performed at Cadogan Hall in 2009, he had not visited the concert... Read more... |
