composers
Ibragimova, Tiberghien, Wigmore Hall review – light, bright and melodic BrahmsSaturday, 21 April 2018
The Brahms violin sonatas make a perfect spring evening recital. The Second and Third were inspired by a summer retreat, but all three are light, bright and with direct melodic appeal. Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Hans Abrahamsen, Lully, Strauss, Duo JatekokSaturday, 21 April 2018
Hans Abrahamsen String Quartets No. 1-4 Arditti String Quartet (Winter & Winter)The opening section of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s 2012 String Quartet No. 4 is subtitled “light and airy”, and, aptly, the four strings produce extraordinary... Read more... |
Score review - breathless dash through music and filmThursday, 05 April 2018
The crucial yet almost indefinable role of music in film – it’s a subject ripe for exploration and celebration, from the musicological technicalities of leitmotifs and ostinatos, through to the colourful characters working to bring directors’... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Lūcija Garūta, Dag Wirén, Ruby HughesSaturday, 31 March 2018
Lūcija Garūta: Music for Piano Reinis Zariņš (piano), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala (LMIC/SKANI)The Latvian composer Lūcija Garūta (1902-1977) reached maturity in the early days of Latvian independence, a supremely talented... Read more... |
Stephen Walsh's Debussy - A Painter in Sound - extractMonday, 05 March 2018
All this time La Mer had been brewing. It was almost a year since Debussy had written to Colonne tentatively offering him “some orchestral pieces” he was working on, and to his publisher, Jacques Durand, a fortnight later listing the titles of the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Diethelm, Grieg, TippettSaturday, 17 February 2018
Diethelm: Symphonic Works Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Rainer Held (Guild)Swiss composers? There's Honegger, and Frank Martin… add to that list one Caspar Diethelm (1926-1997), a prolific musical polymath and teacher who also dabbled in... Read more... |
DVD: London SymphonyFriday, 16 February 2018
Director Alex Barrett’s wordless London Symphony is a conscious throwback to the silent "city symphonies" of the 1920s, specifically Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 Berlin - Symphony of a Great City. You’re also reminded of Terence Davies’s Of Time and the... Read more... |
Theatre of Voices, Kings Place review - fluidity and dynamism in StockhausenSaturday, 10 February 2018
The last time Theatre of Voices performed Stockhausen’s STIMMUNG in London was at the Albert Hall, at a late night Prom in 2008, so Kings Place made for a much more intimate setting. In fact, the work, which is for six unaccompanied voices, relies... Read more... |
Breaking the Rules, LSO St Luke's review – music and murder with GesualdoMonday, 08 January 2018
The “concert drama” is on the up, offering audiences a mingled-genre means to experience music and its context simultaneously. The author and singer Clare Norburn has an absolute peach of a story to tell in the "imagined testimony of Carlo Gesualdo... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer, chansonnier and conductor HK Gruber at 75Thursday, 04 January 2018
You haven't lived until you've witnessed Viennese maverick H(einz) K(arl) Gruber – 75 today (3 January, publication day) – speech-singing, conducting and kazooing his way through his self-styled "pandemonium" Frankenstein!!. Composed for chansonnier... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Katowice - energy and imagination at the Fitelberg Conducting CompetitionTuesday, 28 November 2017
Music competitions are big in Poland. Every five years the classical music world turns its attention to Warsaw for the International Chopin Piano Competition, with much commentary and speculation, and a succession celebrity laureated to maintain its... Read more... |
Singcircle, Barbican review - veteran ensemble bids farewell with StockhausenTuesday, 21 November 2017
STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Singcircle has been... Read more... |
