piano
First Love, Sky Arts 1Wednesday, 25 January 2012
We’ve been this way before. A few years ago the BBC screened a series called Play It Again, in which celebrities had a crack at performing on musical instruments which they had not visited in decades. Sky Arts have revisited the concept with a... Read more... |
CD: Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez, Paul Motian - Further ExplorationsThursday, 19 January 2012
Recorded live at New York's Blue Note during a two-week residency, this double CD celebrating the music and legacy of the jazz pianist and composer, Bill Evans (1929-80), stirs the soul even as it breaks your heart a little. Drummer Paul Motian, a... Read more... |
Khatia Buniatishvili, Wigmore Hall/ Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 08 December 2011
Before his slightly over-extended majesty drops behind a cloud at the end of this bicentenary year, and following Louis Lortie’s light-and-shade monodrama on Sunday, Franz Liszt has moved back to left-of-centre in two ambitious midweek concerts. In... Read more... |
CD: Bill Wells – LemondaleThursday, 08 December 2011
Scotland’s Bill Wells is hard to pin down. Although ostensibly a jazz pianist, boundaries don’t concern him. He’s played with Aidan Moffat and Isobel Campbell. In 2009 he made the GOK album with Japan’s Tori Kudo (who records as Maher Shalal Hash... Read more... |
Louis Lortie, Wigmore HallMonday, 05 December 2011
It was Chopin time when I last heard Louis Lortie, and a typical London clash of scheduling allowed me to catch his effervescent Op 10 Études before pedalling like crazy north of the river for the second half of Elisabeth Leonskaja’s even bigger all... Read more... |
Trpčeski, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Tognetti, Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 30 November 2011
A music broadcaster commented after last night’s concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra that all the hype, all the talk about the surf-obsessed, free-spirited leader Richard Tognetti, had left her half expecting them to surf onto the stage of... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Beethoven, Simon KeenlysideSaturday, 26 November 2011
Bach: Complete Keyboard Works Ivo Janssen (Void Classics)This 20-disc box set has been entertaining me for several months. Dutch pianist Ivo Janssen set up his own record label to distribute his 1997 Goldberg Variations, recorded on the hoof... Read more... |
London Jazz Festival Round-UpTuesday, 22 November 2011
The 10-day London Jazz Festival, now in its 19th year, is a diverse and international festival that embraces the unapologetically commercial Jazz Voice, the outer reaches of (free) free improv and even Abram Wilson’s Jazz for Toddlers. Despite a... Read more... |
Andsnes, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican HallThursday, 13 October 2011
Pundits have always yoked architecture and Bruckner together, touting void and mass at the expense of the dynamic experience music ought to be. Abbado and his Lucerne Festival Orchestra favoured sinuous instability in the Fifth Symphony earlier this... Read more... |
Uchida, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Abbado, Royal Festival HallMonday, 10 October 2011
We're living through a golden age of Bruckner conducting. A revolutionary age. Young sparks like Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Ilan Volkov are doing extraordinary things with the Austrian's music, experimenting with speeds and phrasing,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Tim MinchinSaturday, 08 October 2011
Tim Minchin (b 1975) has had a year in the stratosphere that would arouse envy even in the biggest arena comedians. He has taken an orchestra on the road to play bespoke arrangements of his scabrous attacks on religion, hypocrisy and uncritical... Read more... |
CD: McCormack and Yarde - Places and Other SpacesMonday, 26 September 2011
This Edition Records debut from pianist Andrew McCormack and saxophonist Jason Yarde is a powerful marriage of brilliant musicianship and composition of the first rank. While this is only their second release in the duo format, a follow-up to the... Read more... |
