Bach
Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 29 January 2011
Take one venerated living pianist and one venerated epic of the piano canon and what do you get? Two and a half hours of the most inert pianism imaginable.That there was a human with a pulse performing the first book of Bach's The... Read more... |
Thomas Zehetmair, Wigmore HallFriday, 17 December 2010
Perhaps it was the effect of the elaborately mosaicked and marbled stage of the Wigmore Hall, but when a black-clad Thomas Zehetmair stepped out last night to occupy this space with just his violin and Bach for company, the image was incongruous.... Read more... |
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore HallSunday, 21 November 2010
In 1932 English pianist Harriet Cohen commissioned the best of Britain’s composers – Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Walton, Howells – to produce transcriptions of Bach for piano. The result, A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen, is a true document of its time... Read more... |
Electronica: BBC Concert Orchestra, Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, Hazlewood, QEHThursday, 07 October 2010
I would call them burglars: musicians from the experimental rock, electronica and sound-art traditions who cross the genre divide, sneak into the world of classical music, pillage its more easily pillaged valuables, thieve its respectability, filch... Read more... |
The Bach Dynasty, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore HallFriday, 24 September 2010
No, not some crazy remake of an Eighties soap featuring various members of the Bach family (though I wouldn’t put it past certain channel programmers to come up with the idea), but the Academy of Ancient Music’s (AAM) new series of concerts, which... Read more... |
Llŷr Williams, Wigmore HallThursday, 23 September 2010
Do paws get any mightier than Llŷr Williams's? When not crashing down onto the Wigmore Hall Steinway like a ton of singing bricks, they were digging deep, like strong, nifty moles, foraging for the contrapuntal melodies that lay beneath... Read more... |
Classical CDs Round-Up 11Saturday, 21 August 2010
This month’s new releases include a skilled orchestral re-imagining of Debussy piano music, some unfairly neglected late romanticism and a box of late Haydn symphonies. There’s a sublime Brahms chamber work, and three contrasting interpretations of... Read more... |
PianomaniaMonday, 16 August 2010
Nobody can remember seeing a film about a piano tuner before. Happily, Pianomania isn’t merely unique; it’s a riveting documentary into the bargain. It takes as its subject the micro-detailed and nit-pickingly demanding routine of Stefan Knüpfer,... Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Atherton, BBC Singers, Royal Albert HallThursday, 05 August 2010
The Tenebrae service of Maundy Thursday sees Satan's removal men take over holy duties. Crosses are veiled, lights are extinguished, songs of wailing erupt. Stravinsky's Threni (receiving its Proms debut last night) is a setting of these wails - the... Read more... |
Verbier Festival: an Alpine symphonyMonday, 19 July 2010
It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach... Read more... |
Pollini, London Symphony Orchestra, Eötvös, Barbican HallMonday, 21 June 2010
Helmut Lachenmann is a sort of George Bush of contemporary classical composition, a bogeyman, a warrior, an ideologue. In my time his name has always been served up with an exclamation mark - "you like Lachenmann!?" - partly because his... Read more... |
Bengt Forsberg, Wigmore HallThursday, 15 April 2010
He may not be the most famous musical Swede - in terms of name-recognition that would be Benny of Abba fame rather than Bengt the long-term recital partner of the divine Anne Sofie von Otter - but everyone in the business seems to adore Forsberg, a... Read more... |
