BBCSO
Wang, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dausgaard, Barbican HallSaturday, 23 February 2013
Orchestral volcanoes were erupting all over Europe around the year 1915. It was courageous enough to make a mountain chain out of three of them in a single concert. I was less prepared for the white-heat focus applied by that stalwart Dane Thomas... Read more... |
Alexander Nevsky, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brabbins, Barbican HallSunday, 10 February 2013
Is Prokofiev’s 1938 score for Alexander Nevsky the greatest film music ever written? Not quite, if only for the fact that Sergei Eisenstein’s second sound-picture glorifying historical role models for the ever more tsar-like Stalin, Ivan the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Debussy, Merikanto, SzymanowskiSaturday, 09 February 2013
Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’une faune, La Mer, Images Anima Eterna Brugge/Jos van Immerseel (Outhere)Is it worth going to the trouble of tackling Debussy’s orchestral music on period instruments? Jos van Immerseel’s versatile band have... Read more... |
Barbican and Southbank 2013-14 seasons: still neck and neckTuesday, 22 January 2013
With the cuts still to bite deep, it's enterprising business as usual for both of London’s biggest concert-hall complexes and their satellite orchestras in the newly announced season to come. I use the word "complex" carefully, because as from... Read more... |
Grosvenor, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Litton, Barbican HallSaturday, 12 January 2013
Elgar declared a “massive hope in the future” as the human programme behind his epic First Symphony’s final exultant sprint. That hope was sprinkled like gold dust around the featured artists of this all-English concert. There are good reasons to be... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Lutosławski, Mahler, SalonenSaturday, 08 December 2012
Lutosławski: Orchestral Works III Paul Watkins (cello), BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner (Chandos)If your passing acquaintance with Lutosławski’s output goes no further than the masterly early Concerto for Orchestra, the 1950 Mała Suite... Read more... |
Piemontesi, Karnéus, Reiss, Guildhall Symphony Chorus, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican HallSunday, 02 December 2012
Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second Conductor Laureate, Jiří Bělohlávek was always going to deserve a hero’s welcome for taking his players to the finishing line of their six-year cycle through Mahler’s symphonies. As more superficially... Read more... |
Hearing Voices: Jocelyn PookSunday, 02 December 2012
“I am always fascinated by how much is in a voice, by their textures and qualities,” says composer Jocelyn Pook. “They’re like aural photographs of a person and you recognise them instantly.” We are in her studio in north London and Pook flicks... Read more... |
Music of Today - November: Sonica, HCMF, Oliver Knussen, the Arditti Quartet and Heiner GoebbelsSunday, 02 December 2012
Arditti String Quartet, Wigmore Hall, 31 October ****November is always a good month for new music. This year saw the interest begin a day earlier. Whichever wag chose to hand over Halloween at the Wigmore Hall to two of the most uncompromising... Read more... |
Crabb, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hrůša, Barbican HallSunday, 25 November 2012
There are always risks involved in the uncompromising side of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s family-friendly concerts. Succulent slices of fox-meat in the form of a suite from Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen gave the kids a nourishing start, and... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Smetana, Gidon KremerSaturday, 10 November 2012
Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1 and 3 Leif Ove Andsnes/Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Sony)The best recent cycle of Beethoven piano concertos is Howard Shelley’s, recorded by Chandos with the Orchestra of Opera North. This first volume of Leif... Read more... |
Chilly Gonzales, BBCSO, Barbican HallSunday, 21 October 2012
Chilly Gonzales is a self-mythologising huckster, a throwback to a vaudevillian tradition of entertainer. He’s had enormous success producing the likes of Feist, is in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest solo piano concert (over 27 hours),... Read more... |
