Classical Reviews
Prom 31: Coote, Hallé, ElderSunday, 10 August 2014
The levels of refinement now exhibited by the Hallé, the stylishness and elegance of the playing, define the special relationship that they and Mark Elder have cemented over the last decade and a half. The opening bars of Berlioz’s Le corsaire came off the page like a manifesto for French sensibilities with rapier-like strings parrying airborne woodwinds like the most flexible of swashbuckling foils. The whole overture was so light on breath and string as to be positively balletic... Read more...
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Edinburgh International Festival Opening Concert, RSNO, Knussen, Usher HallSaturday, 09 August 2014
On paper this was an interesting programme. The Edinburgh Festival traditionally opens with a major choral work, but while the international audience would probably be happy with endlessly recycled requiems and masses, festival directors have often felt obliged to venture into more challenging territory. Read more... |
Prom 29: Grosvenor, Goode, BBC Philharmonic, NosedaSaturday, 09 August 2014
“That,” she said, “is what it must be like when you enter heaven.” And I knew just what my wife meant. The organ was in full regalia, revelling in the marshmallow glory of the chorale theme in Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony, with the orchestra trumpeting behind. The Royal Albert Hall itself proved pretty impressive, even when the gentleman in the row in front spent most of Franck’s Symphonic Variations eating a tub of ice cream. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Grundman, Messiaen, Aki KurodaSaturday, 09 August 2014
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Prom 28: D'Orazio, Clayton, BBCSO, OramoFriday, 08 August 2014
All kinds of narratives were at play in this Prom from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Sakari Oramo - and perhaps the truly adventurous programmer might have double-deployed Rory Kinnear, dispassionately chronicling Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex, and taken us beyond the Overture and into the melodramas of Beethoven’s Incidental Music to Egmont. Read more... |
Prom 27: Trusler, BBCNOW, Wigglesworth/Inspire Workshop, Royal Albert HallThursday, 07 August 2014
A full day began and ended with Elgar the European, or rather the citizen of the world. After all, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. Read more... |
Prom 26: European Union Youth Orchestra, London Voices, PetrenkoWednesday, 06 August 2014
The symphony – that structural pillar of classical music – found itself under siege last night at the Proms. Both Berio’s Sinfonia and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony assault and subvert, reshape and reimagine the genre, puncturing the Victorian smugness of the Royal Albert Hall with doubt. Read more... |
Prom 24: BBCSSO, Runnicles/Solemn Vigil of Commemoration, Westminster AbbeyTuesday, 05 August 2014
Despairing in the depths of the Second World War, Richard Strauss turned to Mozart’s string quintets as well as the complete works of Goethe for evidence that German culture still existed. Vaughan Williams might well have done the same for his native art during the so-called Great War in homaging the music of Thomas Tallis. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Pianist Saleem and Violinist Nabeel Abboud AshkarSunday, 03 August 2014
Saleem (born 1976), having dropped the "Abboud" from his name, is one of the world’s most individual top pianists: his recent disc of Mendelssohn concertos with Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester is bound to make my “best of year” list. Nabeel, his brother and junior by two years, has served for some years as a violinist in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, first-rate peacemaking brainchild of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. Read more... |
Prom 20: Crabb, BBCSO, BrabbinsSaturday, 02 August 2014
The first half of last night’s Prom was supposed to be linked by the theme of the First World War, but Anthony Marwood’s illness meant that Sally Beamish’s Violin Concerto, based on All Quiet on the Western Front, had to be replaced at late notice by her accordion concerto The Singing. Read more... |
Jorge Grundman: A Mortuis Resurgere Susana Cordón (soprano), Brodsky Quartet (Chandos)Pages
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