LSO
St Lawrence String Quartet, LSO String Orchestra, Adams, LSO St Luke'sThursday, 24 January 2013
“It looks like the Coconut Lounge,” remarked John Adams as he stepped up jauntily to introduce the first of two big string pieces composed 30 years apart. The folk with their drinks at the candlelit tables, though, were never allowed to sit back and... Read more... |
Barbican and Southbank 2013-14 seasons: still neck and neckTuesday, 22 January 2013
With the cuts still to bite deep, it's enterprising business as usual for both of London’s biggest concert-hall complexes and their satellite orchestras in the newly announced season to come. I use the word "complex" carefully, because as from... Read more... |
Upshaw, London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 18 January 2013
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that... Read more... |
Kavakos, Matsuev, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, BarbicanThursday, 20 December 2012
Valery Gergiev’s exploration of the music of Karol Szymanowski is one of the most vitalising series mounted at the Barbican in recent years - to compare, say, with Sir Colin Davis’s Sibelius and Berlioz, Michael Tilson Thomas’s tributes to Leonard... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallWednesday, 19 December 2012
Valery Gergiev is a human dynamo. Even before embarking on the latest tranche of his (slightly curious) pairing of Szymanowski and Brahms with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been principal conductor since 2007, at the Barbican, the... Read more... |
Vengerov, London Symphony Orchestra, Ticciati, Barbican HallThursday, 06 December 2012
Her Majesty was making a rare concert-hall appearance to present the Queen’s Medal for Music, and any little Englanders in the audience might have been tempted to link royalty to Elgar’s Enigma Variations. But conductor Robin Ticciati, with a... Read more... |
Kavakos, London Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov, Barbican HallMonday, 26 November 2012
Leonidas Kavakos was originally meant to be premiering a concerto by Argentinian composer Oswaldo Golijov, which had also been scheduled for Berlin in 2011 and subsequently for Los Angeles in May this year. The composer missed both those deadlines... Read more... |
Jansen, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, BarbicanSunday, 23 September 2012
Janine Jansen had every right to be nervous. The last time most of us saw the London Symphony Orchestra the audience spent the whole time laughing at their star soloist. But then Mr Bean has a very different skill set to Jansen. She's able to... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Cage, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Smaro GregoriadouSaturday, 15 September 2012
John Cage: As Is Alexei Lubimov (piano, prepared piano), Natalia Pschenitschnikova (voice) (ECM)One of the few avant-garde composers whose name is widely known, thanks to the infamous 4’33”, John Cage’s reputation as a fungus-collecting... Read more... |
Barbican Centre, 2012-13 SeasonWednesday, 01 August 2012
The autumn 2012 season at the Barbican Centre offers an international history of photography, Juliette Binoche in Strindberg, a train packed with African music, a festival of ecstatic, devotional and psychedelic music, and a film made by London... Read more... |
Swing Symphony, BarbicanThursday, 26 July 2012
The UK premiere of Wynton Marsalis's Swing Symphony (Symphony No 3) last night was extraordinary on several counts. We heard, first and foremost, a real dialogue between jazz band and orchestra. Not one of those fist-bitingly cornball jazz... Read more... |
Four Brits among 20 shortlisted for conducting competitionMonday, 25 June 2012Twenty young conductors have been shortlisted to compete in the Donatella Flick/London Symphony Orchestra Conducting Competition in late September. The top prize is a cash award of £15,000 and an attachment to the LSO as Assistant Conductor.The 20... Read more... |
