Stravinsky
Koen Kessels: 'there's a joke in ballet we only have two tempi' - interviewWednesday, 31 May 2017
Koen Kessels is on a mission to change the culture around music in ballet. Anyone who has heard the Belgian conduct will know that he is the right person for the job: Kessels makes the classic scores come alive in the pit like nobody else I’ve heard... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Gražyna Bacewicz, Stravinsky, Nathan WilliamsonSaturday, 06 May 2017
Gražyna Bacewicz: Chamber Music Diana Ambache and friends (Ambache Recordings)This is an easy disc to love. Gražyna Bacewicz’s music is consistently good, often exceptionally so, and it's gratifying that new recordings on Hyperion and Chandos... Read more... |
Balanchine's Jewels, Royal BalletMonday, 03 April 2017
Balanchine's Jewels is catnip to dedicated ballet lovers. A homage, faithful and brilliant as only a master could make, to three different styles of choreography and three different national sensibilities, it's as dense, expertly carved and... Read more... |
Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, Sadler's WellsFriday, 24 March 2017
Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning? Last night's performance at Sadler's Wells, a sequel in all but name to the programme called... Read more... |
Aimard, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHTuesday, 21 February 2017
A new work by Igor Stravinsky is always going to be a major event, so Sunday evening’s UK premiere of his rediscovered Funeral Song was hotly anticipated. The score disappeared after its first performance and was thought lost in the Russian... Read more... |
Gerhardt, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings PlaceMonday, 09 January 2017
What's not to like, or love, would have to be the sensible response to both the opening programme of Kings Place's year-long Cello Unwrapped festival at Kings Place and its life-enhancing execution. Symmetries abounded – between Alban Gerhardt's... Read more... |
Zehetmair, LPO, Jurowski, RFHTuesday, 18 October 2016
This is how new and modern music should be done. In the London Philharmonic, we had an orchestra well-prepared to meet technical challenges and resolved to making sense from them. Vladimir Jurowski is a conductor who places faith in composers and... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 5, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHFriday, 30 September 2016
The Symphony of Psalms, which ended the Philharmonia’s Stravinsky series last night, is an indelible masterpiece, silencing the tired but persistent accusation that Stravinsky’s music is clever but cold. Abstract it may be, but suffused with an... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 4, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHMonday, 26 September 2016
Stravinsky's music, chameleonic yet always itself, offers so many lines of thought. One struck me immediately with the descending, even harp notes and tender, veiled strings at the start of his 1947 ballet Orpheus last night: the inexorable beat of... Read more... |
Jeremy Denk, Wigmore HallSunday, 18 September 2016
Medieval to Modern – Jeremy Denk’s Wigmore Hall recital took us on a whistle-stop tour of Western music, beginning with Machaut in the mid-14th century and ending with Ligeti at the end of the 20th. The programme was made up of 25 short works, each... Read more... |
Prom 29: NYO, Gardner/Prom 30: Kolesnikov, NYOS, VolkovMonday, 08 August 2016
If the BBC were to plan a Proms season exclusively devoted to youth orchestras and ensembles, many of us would be delighted. Standards are now at professional level right across the board. 20 years ago, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland... Read more... |
Prom 27: Kuusisto, BBCSSO, DausgaardSaturday, 06 August 2016
Concert halls, as Gregg Wallace might observe if he ever went to one, don’t come much bigger than the Royal Albert Hall, nor violin concertos than the Tchaikovsky. Faced with this awesome combination, the temptation for a soloist is to play up to... Read more... |
