Bartók
Upshaw, London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 18 January 2013
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bartók, Ligeti, Jocelyn Pook, TchaikovskySaturday, 12 January 2013
Bartók, Eötvös, Ligeti – Violin Concertos Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern/Peter Eötvös (Naïve)An embarrassment of riches here - it’s hard to know where to start. The opening of Bartók’s Violin... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Mark Padmore, Lutosławski, Bartók, Denner EnsembleSaturday, 16 June 2012
Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn and strings; Nocturne; Finzi: Dies Natalis Mark Padmore, Britten Sinfonia/Jacqueline Shave, with Stephen Bell (horn) (Harmonia Mundi)Britten’s Serenade and Nocturne are still indelibly associated with the... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Saraste, Barbican HallSaturday, 17 December 2011
Is it ever a good idea to programme two symphonies by one composer in a single concert? Maverick Valery Gergiev is likely to stand alone in applying the rule to Mahler. Yet curiously his Prom marathon of two big instalments made more sense as stages... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bartók, Tchaikovsky, Edwards, Sibelius, John WilsonSaturday, 03 December 2011
Bartók: Violin Concerto No 2, Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto Valeriy Sokolov Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/David Zinman (Virgin)Bartók’s 1938 Violin Concerto No 2 seems to have garnered more respect than affection; it’s been overtaken in the 20th-... Read more... |
Davies, London Symphony Orchestra, Zhang, Barbican HallThursday, 10 November 2011
Highly finished literary tales of doomed nixies, like Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, seem to have prompted reams of bad art but plenty of mellifluous music. Not even all of that is on the same level. Viennese late-Romantic Zemlinsky's... Read more... |
Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Festival HallFriday, 04 November 2011
Sometimes the most disturbing images exist only in our imaginations - and so the questions posed in the preface to Bartók’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle become especially pertinent: “Where did this happen - outside or within? Where... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Bass Sir John Tomlinson, Part 2Sunday, 18 September 2011
A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works... Read more... |
Damrau, De Maistre, Queen's Hall/ Aimard, Bamberg SO, Nott, Usher Hall, EdinburghSaturday, 03 September 2011
What do visiting German performers add to the Edinburgh International Festival's Auld (Scotland-France) Alliance thread? Simple: when they communicate as superbly as soprano Diana Damrau and Jonathan Nott's Bambergers, the music-making works at the... Read more... |
Alina Ibragimova, Quay Brothers, Wilton's Music HallWednesday, 27 July 2011
Nine out of 10 attempts to feed an audience's visual responses to abstract music are doomed to failure; a great communicator will always conjure stronger pictures in the listener's mind. And there's no doubt that young violinist Alina Ibragimova... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Bavouzet, London Philharmonic Orchestra, JurowskiWednesday, 27 July 2011
The world tour that the Proms offer this year touches down in no more fascinating musical country than Hungary, with three of its great composers, Liszt, Bartók and Kodály brought into the Albert Hall last night by the ever-stimulating Vladimir... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Schiff, Hallé, ElderFriday, 22 July 2011
It was partly as penance for having missed the previous evening's Czech festival that I arena-prommed for last night's Moravian finale, to be happily strafed by the nine extra trumpets of Janáček's Sinfonietta. I hadn't quite expected to be so on... Read more... |
