Beethoven
Gabriele Carcano, Fidelio Orchestra Cafe - fresh, funny and focused BeethovenMonday, 14 December 2020
Perhaps it’s just the conventional mind which celebrates the pathos, tragedy and triumph in Beethoven’s music at the expense of his humour. And that’s the one aspect of the composer which has been a constant revelation – to me, at any rate – in his... Read more... |
Fidelio, Opera North online review - less is really moreMonday, 14 December 2020
Adaptability is the name of the game for big companies in the music business now. And Opera North’s streamed presentation of Beethoven's Fidelio from inside Leeds Town Hall is a prime example of just how adaptable things need to be.The orchestra is... Read more... |
Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review – Classical consolationsThursday, 10 December 2020
The key of C minor threw a dark shadow over music long before it became the tonality for Beethoven to express the struggle of one against many in the Fifth Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto. Mozart was a feted teenager and Beethoven a babe in... Read more... |
Isata Kanneh-Mason, BBCSSO, Gourlay online review - give thanks for lockdown concertsMonday, 30 November 2020
As our friends across the pond celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, a mix of music from America kicked off the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert, opening with Massachusetts-born composer Carl Ruggles’s Angels for muted brass. Ruggles... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Kirill Petrenko, Avi Avital, RavelSaturday, 28 November 2020
Berliner Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko: Music by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Franz Schmidt, Rudi Stephan (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)Kirill Petrenko’s supposed indifference to making recordings is overstated: there’s a whole load of stuff... Read more... |
‘Our whole industry is supported by vulnerable freelance creators': Chen Reiss on the artist in a time of CoronavirusMonday, 23 November 2020
I am not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last, but what a strange year 2020 has become! I am learning afresh what it is to be both a singer and a parent and, although we have all been kept closed in our little home “bubbles,” we are... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla online review - muted celebrationsThursday, 19 November 2020
“This year was supposed to be so very different” said Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when he spoke to theartsdesk earlier this year. Talk about an understatement. The CBSO has hardly been alone in... Read more... |
BSO, Karabits, The Lighthouse, Poole online review – stealing fire from the godsThursday, 12 November 2020
There have been quite enough Beethoven tribute-acts and remixes during the 2020 anniversary year. We, and he, deserve better than composers riding pillion on that reckless, purring beast of a 700hp compositional engine. True to form, Magnus Lindberg... Read more... |
First Person: Jessica Duchen on writing about Beethoven's Immortal BelovedTuesday, 10 November 2020
The identity of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” is one of the biggest cans of worms in musical history. I hadn’t the slightest intention of writing a novel about it. At first I thought I’d create a narrated concert for the anniversary year... but... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Josquin, Tabea DebusSaturday, 07 November 2020
Beethoven Transformed, Volumes 1 and 2 Boxwood & Brass (Resonus Classics)The Harmonie, a small instrumental group made up of pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons, hit its stride in late 18th century Vienna. Early repertoire mostly... Read more... |
Diabelli Variations, Imogen Cooper, Fidelio Orchestra Cafe review - a universe for a (temporary) farewellThursday, 05 November 2020
Beethoven anniversary year would not have been complete without witnessing a masterly live interpretation of his 33 ever more questing piano variations on a jolly waltz. This one was revelatory. Could I have afforded it, had there been more... Read more... |
Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - the stuff of dreamsWednesday, 28 October 2020
To plan a programme around The Tempest, its symbolism and the idea of evanescence, the fragility of the human condition, is one thing. To pull it off convincingly is quite another. The young Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov not only did so in... Read more... |
