Classical Reviews
Classical CDs Weekly: John Cage, Schubert, StravinskySaturday, 02 February 2013
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Rachlin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Runnicles, Glasgow City HallsFriday, 01 February 2013
Viennese night in Glasgow’s Candleriggs was hardly going to be a simple matter of waltzes and polkas. True, its curtain-raiser was a Blue Danube with red blood in its veins rather than the anodyne river water of this year’s New Year concert from Austria’s capital; one would expect no less from Donald Runnicles after the refined but anaemic Franz Welser-Möst. Read more... |
Spassov, LSO, Järvi, Barbican HallFriday, 01 February 2013
The tabloids are getting shriller every day in their warnings about the army of Bulgarians and Romanians about to descend on British shores, so it’s probably lucky that none of their journalists was present last night at the Barbican to witness an Eastern European musical coup of deadly efficiency. Read more... |
Zimerman, Philharmonia, Salonen, Royal Festival HallThursday, 31 January 2013
The centenary bandwagon always passes some composers by: how many organisations in Britain will be celebrating George Lloyd or Tikhon Khrennikov? Other figures almost get steamrollered flat with attention; Britten, I’d say, is this year’s likely candidate. But who could throw any stones at the birthday cake and bunting created by the Philharmonia Orchestra for that mercurial Polish wizard Witold Lutoslawski? Read more... |
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 30 January 2013
Period instruments demand absolute honesty from their players. Their sound is their personality - candid, quirky, eccentrically beautiful - but their soul is revealed in the spirit of the playing, where beauty is not skin deep and the expressiveness of phrasing in the strings is created in the bow arm and from a truthfulness of intonation that does not hide behind vibrato. Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of King's College Cambridge, Kings PlaceWednesday, 30 January 2013
Kings Place’s Bach Unwrapped season invites audiences to come at the composer from new and unexpected angles. Bach gets arranged, adapted and re-orchestrated, and his legacy is showcased in works from three centuries. Occasionally however he also gets played straight – and it doesn’t get much straighter or more authentic than the Academy of Ancient Music and the Choir of King’s College Cambridge performing the St Matthew Passion. Read more... |
LSO, St Lawrence String Quartet, Adams, BarbicanMonday, 28 January 2013
And so John Adams’s residency with the London Symphony Orchestra reaches its finale – a brisk allegro of a concert with a cheeky coda in the form of the composer’s latest orchestral work, Absolute Jest. Read more... |
The Dream of Gerontius, LPO, Elder, Royal Festival HallSunday, 27 January 2013
We’re still in the foothills of the Southbank Centre’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, but already the harmonic ground is becoming unsteady underfoot. Last weekend saw the gemütlichkeit of Johann Strauss give way to the brutality of Richard Strauss, exposed us to the moistly chromatic flesh of Salome that lies behind the seven veils, and showed just a hint of Schoenbergian ankle. Read more... |
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Atherton, St David's Hall, CardiffSaturday, 26 January 2013
The Britten centenary will, among much else, inspire performances of his comparatively under-regarded instrumental works - pieces like the cello suites and the string quartets, already sampled in brilliant performances at last week’s Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival. Read more... |
St Lawrence String Quartet, LSO String Orchestra, Adams, LSO St Luke'sThursday, 24 January 2013
“It looks like the Coconut Lounge,” remarked John Adams as he stepped up jauntily to introduce the first of two big string pieces composed 30 years apart. The folk with their drinks at the candlelit tables, though, were never allowed to sit back and let it all wash over them. Read more... |
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