Southbank Centre
Rob Delaney, QEHThursday, 25 June 2015
Most people in the UK will know US comic Rob Delaney from his wonderfully sardonic Twitter feed (1.17 million followers) or his autobiography Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage - a painfully honest (and often... Read more... |
Juntunen, Philharmonia, Ashkenazy, RFHFriday, 12 June 2015
Vladimir Ashkenazy should be made an honorary Finn: not just for his constant championship of Sibelius’s orchestral works throughout his conducting life so far, but above all for the way he understands them. On the evidence of last night’s 150th... Read more... |
Schubert Sonatas 3, Barenboim, RFHMonday, 01 June 2015
“You don’t love Schubert’s music?” Such, according to the greatest of living Schubert interpreters Elisabeth Leonskaja, was the response of her mentor Sviatoslav Richter to students who omitted the exposition repeats in the piano sonatas. ... Read more... |
Yevgeny Sudbin, QEHThursday, 14 May 2015
Mahler once wrote that his symphonies were edifices built from the same stones, gathered in childhood. In each of the four recitals I’ve heard from Yevgeny Sudbin, he’s moved several of his repertoire cornerstones around to different effect in the... Read more... |
Grivnov, LPO, Jurowski, RFHThursday, 30 April 2015
Deep pain and sadness expressed through intense creative discipline aren’t qualities noted often enough in the music of Sergey Rachmaninov. Yet they’ve been consistently underlined, with rigour to match, in Vladimir Jurowski’s season-long “Inside... Read more... |
Stephen Hough, RFHWednesday, 29 April 2015
It took just two bars of Debussy's La plus que lente for Stephen Hough to transport the entire Royal Festival Hall to Paris. The nearest thing the French composer ever wrote to a café waltz – inspired by a gypsy band in a local hotel – this... Read more... |
'You must accept that muscle is machinery'Wednesday, 29 April 2015
Basketball doesn’t often stray onto the arts pages. Cinema pays the occasional visit. White Men Can’t Jump starred Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as a pair of slamdunking hustlers. Hoop Dreams followed two inner-city college kids in Chicago as... Read more... |
Batiashvili, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, RFHWednesday, 22 April 2015
Gasps of surprise were heard across the country last month, when Richard Morrison on BBC Radio 3's "Building a Library" announced Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin as his library choice for Elgar’s Second Symphony. That... Read more... |
Laura Marling, QEHWednesday, 22 April 2015
There’s no doubting the precocious talent of Laura Marling. At just 25 she recently released her fifth album, Short Movie, which matched the spiky introspection of song-writing previously driven by folk melodies with a new rock-orientated sound.... Read more... |
Argerich, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, RFHTuesday, 21 April 2015
It looked like a potential misalliance between performers used to looking at the stars and a programme of earthly, ideally rather broadly humorous delights. In the event, Martha Argerich, who can turn her high, lucid playing to most ends, sought out... Read more... |
Perianes, LPO, Ticciati, RFHThursday, 16 April 2015
Conductor Robin Ticciati and pianist Javier Perianes are an odd couple. Ticciati is forthright and disciplined, while Perianes is reticent but erratic. But they demonstrated last night that Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto can accommodate those... Read more... |
NYO, Volkov, RFHSunday, 12 April 2015
Considering the possibilities, we got off lightly when the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, always fearless in the face of the outrageous, performed Percy Grainger’s “music for an imaginary ballet”, The Warriors. The orchestra could have... Read more... |
