CBSO
Uchida, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, BirminghamFriday, 03 May 2013
“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Blake asked the tiger. One might have asked the same question of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, with Mozart’s G major Piano Concerto, K.453, as the lamb, in this hyper-diverse Birmingham concert. The image of... Read more... |
Bolshoi summer season announced, with prodigals returnedWednesday, 23 January 2013
Despite the horror of the acid attack on their director Sergei Filin last week, the Bolshoi Ballet has confirmed its programme for its three-week Royal Opera House season from 29 July to 17 August. Filin's name remains at the head of the page as... Read more... |
Weltethos: CBSO, Gardner, Royal Festival HallMonday, 08 October 2012
The quest for the spiritual in the musical has been the dominant preoccupation of Jonathan Harvey’s since his earliest works. Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy has been an acknowledged influence on the composer, who has made a career of exploring what... Read more... |
BBC Proms: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, NelsonsWednesday, 22 August 2012
It is a rare treat for Londoners to have the CBSO with Andris Nelsons in town, and the Albert Hall was, if not fully sold out, then certainly well stocked. It would be fair to assume that the main draw was Shostakovich’s giant and much-debated... Read more... |
Knussen Sixtieth Birthday, CBSO Centre, BirminghamSaturday, 26 May 2012
Ask any young composer in this country who is the most important figure in modern British music, and the answer is likely to come back quick and sharp: Oliver Knussen. Himself a composer of dazzling brilliance when he gets round to it, and a... Read more... |
The Dream of Gerontius, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gardner, BarbicanSunday, 15 April 2012
It's one of the great perversities of modern cultural life that orchestras from America and Venezuela visit London more often than those from Birmingham or Manchester. A perversity and a shame, as last night's exceptional performance of Elgar's The... Read more... |
Kaufmann, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, BirminghamThursday, 08 March 2012
There was a lovely narrative to last night's CBSO concert. The muggy oppressiveness of Britten's Four Sea Interludes (and Passacaglia) appeared somehow explained by Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, then dissolved by the love letters that were the Strauss... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Midori, CBSO, NelsonsSunday, 31 July 2011
Jealousy of people who live in Birmingham is not (I venture to hazard) so widespread a phenomenon as to merit a name all its own. After last night’s Prom from the CBSO and music director Andris Nelsons however, a term may well have to be coined for... Read more... |
Colin Currie, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, CBSO, BCMG, Oliver Knussen, Aldeburgh FestivalMonday, 27 June 2011
Yesterday afternoon's final concert at the Aldeburgh Festival saw an astonishing world premiere. A major new double concerto from a 102-year-old Elliott Carter. Imagine Schubert premiering a song cycle in 1900, or Van Gogh unveiling a self... Read more... |
Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, CBSO, Ono, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 19 May 2011
Gustav Mahler died, according to his wife Alma’s memoirs, at midnight on 18 May, 1911. Anyone mystically inclined to connect noughts and "o"s – you see it crossed my mind – might find some spooky link between 00:00 (pedantically, the time of death... Read more... |
Rites: 3D, CBSO, Volkov, Royal Festival HallMonday, 25 April 2011
Were the great Diaghilev alive today, surely he’d be working in the imaginative possibilities of electronic technology - this was the opinion given me by the arts panjandrum, the late Sir John Drummond. And given the developments of 3D, who knows... Read more... |
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, CBSO Centre, BirminghamMonday, 06 December 2010
The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group does star concerts, which fill (or nearly) the CBSO Centre; and they do old-fashioned New Music concerts, which don’t quite empty it, but leave one wondering who exactly – if anyone - some of the works being... Read more... |
