Classical Reviews

Jansen, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall

Geoff Brown Thursday, 02 February 2012

At last, a bag of sweets! In earlier concerts from Vladimir Jurowski’s LPO series Prokofiev: Man of the People? much time was spent consuming the composer’s flat soufflés, experimental rock cakes, or the fancy dish that was really haddock. Interesting for the brain, maybe, but the diet on occasion has been hard on the stomach. Not that any of this impinged on audience numbers: the season has definitely proved Jurowski’s happy lock on the London Philharmonic’s audiences.

Kavakos, Ax, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Thursday, 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.

Fleisher, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

alexandra Coghlan Thursday, 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.

Comment

Blaumane, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal College of Music

Geoff Brown Sunday, 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.

Spence, London Symphony Orchestra, Adès, Barbican Hall

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 16 January 2012

Last Tuesday night saw the London Symphony Orchestra celebrating 20^th 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.

Dido and Aeneas/ Actéon, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 13 January 2012

The Wigmore Hall staged its own Entente Cordiale last night with an operatic double bill bridging both sides of the Channel.

2011: Reality 1, Art 0

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 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?

2011: From Russia - With Love?

Tom Birchenough 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.

2011: Schoolroom Fairies and a Cross-Dressing Mezzo

David Nice Friday, 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.

Comment

2011: Welsh Warblers and Wagner Gone West

stephen Walsh Thursday, 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.