Tchaikovsky
Opinion: When artists could speak outMonday, 12 August 2013
Take note of the title, with its “could”, not “must”. “The word ‘must’ is not to be used to Princes,” quoth Good Queen Bess as echoed in Britten’s Gloriana. Yet that was the verb used by New York writer Scott Rose, guest-posting on Norman Lebrecht’s... Read more... |
Prom 30: Bavouzet, BBC Philharmonic, NosedaTuesday, 06 August 2013
It was mostly Russian night at the Proms, and mostly music you could dance to, as a hand jiving Arena Prommer rather distractingly proved in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. Even Prokofiev’s elephantine Second Piano Concerto was... Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, Royal Albert HallThursday, 13 June 2013
So much is wrong with Derek Deane’s arena Swan Lake, as if he read a poem and rewrote it as a press release. If you want big fat images of swans, 60 white-feathered girls in precision-tooled lines, this is for you. Take your photos on your phone,... Read more... |
Berezovsky, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Järvi, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 25 May 2013
In 1980, an orchestra and conductor then hardly known in Britain came to the Royal Festival Hall. I went to hear Elisabeth Söderström in Strauss’s Four Last Songs; I left stunned by an unorthodox Sibelius Second Symphony and above all by one of the... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Royal OperaTuesday, 05 February 2013
Studying Russian for three years to read Pushkin’s verse-novel Eugene Onegin in the original doesn’t guarantee the finest interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s equally great lyric homage. Yet it certainly seems to have focused the imagination of Covent... Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletSunday, 20 January 2013
The worldwide success of John Cranko’s 1960s version of Tchaikovsky’s opera, in turn an adaptation of Pushkin’s verse-drama, might have taken even the choreographer by surprise. Tchaikovsky himself worried that “Pushkin’s exquisite texture will be... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 11 January 2013
If anyone who saw Matthew Bourne’s irreverent rewrite of The Sleeping Beauty currently at Sadler’s Wells is curious about the original classical ballet, they’ll find it in rousing glory and glinting style with English National Ballet at the Coliseum... Read more... |
The Nutcracker 3D, Mariinsky Ballet/ The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 13 December 2012
The seasonal Nuts-fest continues (and culminates) with another two to add to the roast – live: English National Ballet’s recent production, and digital: the Mariinsky Theatre’s 3D film version. To the cinema we go. This is the first 3D Nutcracker... 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... |
The Sleeping Beauty, English National Ballet, Milton Keynes TheatreThursday, 18 October 2012
Has the great ballerina Tamara Rojo ever done a more nerveracking performance than she did last night in Milton Keynes? On her first night as player-manager of English National Ballet, both its new artistic director and its chief ballerina,... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal BalletThursday, 11 October 2012
The Royal Ballet’s autumn season began on Monday, but this was the eagerly awaited Swan Lake. Natalia Osipova, ex-Bolshoi, now principal with American Ballet Theater and the Mikhailovsky in St Petersburg, was making her debut as a guest with the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Nielsen, Tchaikovsky, Reiko Fujisawa, The Dublin Drag OrchestraSaturday, 21 July 2012
Bach, Beethoven, Schubert Reiko Fujisawa (piano) (Quartz)Each of these three composers makes very specific, particular demands on a pianist’s technique. Playing Bach as sharply and as delicately as this doesn’t suggest that Reiko Fujisawa will... Read more... |
