Stravinsky
Lest We Forget, English National Ballet, BarbicanThursday, 03 April 2014![]() Taken together, the memorial accoutrements of the First World War are probably this country's most highly developed, and widely experienced, discourse of public history. Through two-minute silences, poppies, public monuments, and near-univeral... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Hilliard EnsembleSaturday, 11 January 2014![]() Stravinsky: L'Histoire du Soldat, Octet Eastman Wind Ensemble, Eastman Virtuosi/Mark Scatterday, with Jan Opalach (narrator) (Avie)Stravinsky's idiomatic brass and woodwind writing still surprises. Dedicated bassoonists can even purchase a... Read more... |
Vadim Gluzman, Angela Yoffe, Wigmore HallSunday, 29 December 2013![]() There were two strong reasons, I reckoned, for struggling to the Wigmore Hall during the interstitial last week of the year. One was an ascetic wish to be harrowed by a mind and soul of winter, both within and without, in Prokofiev’s towering D... Read more... |
Chroma/ The Human Seasons/ The Rite of Spring, The Royal BalletSunday, 10 November 2013![]() This triple bill is of works commissioned for the Royal Ballet: Kenneth MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring was first performed in 1962, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma had its debut in 2006 while this is the world premiere of David Dawson’s first ballet for... Read more... |
The Chaos Orchestra presents 'The Rite', The VortexThursday, 24 October 2013![]() Still only a year out of college, the diversely gifted trumpeter, composer and bandleader Laura Jurd has risen rapidly to prominence, enterprisingly bypassing the ritual of hanging around to be noticed by creating her own scene and ensembles. One of... Read more... |
Prom 26: Serkin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, KnussenFriday, 02 August 2013You wait years for a live performance to test whether Tippett’s Second Symphony is a masterpiece, and then two come along within six months. Both are due to the missionary zeal of the BBC Symphony Orchestra management, determined to give an... Read more... |
Prom 4: Les Siècles, RothMonday, 15 July 2013You can get away with playing ballet music of the Ancien Régime on Bastille Day so long as you end with a revolution. That was how live wire François-Xavier Roth and his mostly French musicians angled it, covering nearly 250 years of Parisian dance... Read more... |
Britten and Poulenc at the Cheltenham Music FestivalThursday, 11 July 2013![]() "Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies,... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Elgar, Lutosławski, StravinskySaturday, 08 June 2013![]() Elgar: Symphony no 2, Sospiri, Elegy Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo (BIS)Hearing such authentic Elgarian sounds from a Swedish orchestra under a Finnish conductor may surprise, but Sakari Oramo specialized in British music while... Read more... |
iTMOi, Akram Khan Company, Sadler's Wells TheatreFriday, 31 May 2013![]() When the public “got” or did not “get” the original Rite of Spring of Nijinsky and Stravinsky exactly 100 years ago this week, they couldn't call on emotional logic or aesthetic familiarity or symbolic recognition to help. Only imaginative reflex... Read more... |
Monteverdi Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Gardiner, Barbican HallFriday, 26 April 2013![]() Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, unintentionally homaging the late Sir Colin Davis... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Goossens, Mackintosh, StravinskySaturday, 06 April 2013![]() Goossens: Orchestral works vol.2 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (Chandos)British conductor and composer Sir Eugene Goossens achieved major fame leading the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s. Previously he'd given the first... Read more... |
