Classical Reviews
Kavakos, Ax, Wigmore HallThursday, 02 February 2012
The roar with which Leonidas Kavakos and Emanuel Ax dispatched Beethoven’s mighty Op. 30 C minor Violin Sonata – flinging off the writhing semiquaver coils of the Finale with desperate vigour – was enough to remind anyone in the Wigmore Hall last night of the serious talent of this Greek violinist. It was not however quite enough to banish the memory of the evening’s whimpering start – the ragged gesture in the general direction of the Violin Sonata in A Op. 12 No. Read more... |
Fleisher, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 26 January 2012
The London Philharmonic’s current festival – Prokofiev: Man of the People? – is all about the question mark. While the festival’s concerts, lectures and even its classical club-night each make their own statement, the overarching spirit here is one of exploration, of questioning. Jurowski and his orchestra are peeling back the composer’s grinning modernist mask and attempting to expose the human face (or possibly faces) behind it. Read more... |
Blaumane, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal College of MusicSunday, 22 January 2012
How do you solve a problem like Prokofiev? Not with a TV talent hunt promoted by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not even, I’m beginning to think, with the current London Philharmonic concert series, Prokofiev: Man of the People?, devised by Vladimir Jurowski. Read more... |
Spence, London Symphony Orchestra, Adès, Barbican HallMonday, 16 January 2012
Last Tuesday night saw the London Symphony Orchestra celebrating 20th century English music under the baton of Antonio Pappano, launching proceedings with a stylish (and more than a little sexy) rendition of the dance suite from Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face. Read more... |
Dido and Aeneas/ Actéon, Wigmore HallFriday, 13 January 2012
The Wigmore Hall staged its own Entente Cordiale last night with an operatic double bill bridging both sides of the Channel. Read more... |
2011: Reality 1, Art 0Monday, 02 January 2012
We laughed. We cried. We cursed. We gulped. Not at fiction. But at fact. At the real world. The year's best theatre? Murdoch vs Watson. Thriller? The hunt for Osama. Horror? Read more... |
2011: From Russia - With Love?Saturday, 31 December 2011
It took a relatively little-noticed television documentary, Vlad’s Army, broadcast in Channel 4’s Unreported World strand to confirm that theartsdesk has a readership in Russia. Peter Oborne’s film (the presenter pictured below) caught the pro-Kremlin youth movement, the Nashi, with its defences down, and the result depicted, no holds barred, how politics works there today. Read more... |
2011: Schoolroom Fairies and a Cross-Dressing MezzoFriday, 30 December 2011
Two precisely imagined dream-visions bookend a cornucopia on the musical front. I’ll start with the deadly but save the apparently frivolous for the top slot. Christopher Alden’s pitiless exiling of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Elizabethan wood to 1960s school block was to opera what Lars von Trier’s Melancholia was to film: audience-sundering, often alienating, sometimes enticing, but very much its own consistent world. Read more... |
2011: Welsh Warblers and Wagner Gone WestThursday, 29 December 2011
Living and working 150 miles from London, one either clutches at local straws or gets on a train. I’ve done both in 2011, as usual, but in a way the local is more stimulating, not because it’s better (ha!) but because there’s so much less of it. Read more... |
2011: Beethoven, Bartók, and the BardTuesday, 27 December 2011
Beethoven has been a real touchstone for classical music in the UK in 2011; flattening all in their way, the mighty Leipzig Gewandhaus and Riccardo Chailly delivered high-speed, high-risk thrills in their complete cycle of symphonies. Read more... |
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