 Prom 65 Review: Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in Brahms & Shostakovich No beating around the bush with this programme: for his second Prom with the Berlin Philharmonic (now, it seems, fully rebranded as the Berliner Philharmoniker in the programme), Sir Simon Rattle presented two pillars of the repertoire in symphonies by Brahms and Shostakovich.... more> |
 CD review: Keyboard music by Iannis Xenakis (Neos) Iannis Xenakis' music - dense, precipitous and bewildering as it is - is not easily realised. This situation is often exaggerated in his pieces for solo instruments. Works of this nature, the trombone solo Keren for instance, generate much of their emotional force from the sheer intricacy of their ideas... more> |
 Edinburgh Festival Review: Istanbul Music and Sema Group On TV, when I got home, Seth Lakeman was blazing through his set at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Blazing, high octane intensity; that's what I had expected from the Whirling Dervishes. Instead, imagine the choir of the Sistine Chapel appearing on a theatre stage and not just singing liturgy but presenting the whole missal, smells... more> |
 CD review: Patrizia Ciofi in La straniera by Bellini (Opera Rara) Bellini's fourth opera, La Straniera, marked out the composer as one of the leading figures of the post-Rossini generation. Indeed, he then went on to receive a commission for I Capuleti e I Montecchi that far surpassed the record amount received by Rossini for his final Italian score. Italian soprano Patrizia Ciofi brings the... more> |
 CD review: Music by Mark Andre (Kairos) The music of Mark Andre is like Beethoven's late quartets as compared to the heroic middle symphonies of his most obvious forebears, Grisey and Lachenmann. Any sense of compromise that comes from externality has already been abrogated in this music, its place filled with internalised, dilated, unfolding thought. In fact his music... more> |
 CD reviews: Jane Morgan, Deanna Durbin, Pinocchio & Irma la Douce (Sepia) These four new releases show the excellent ongoing work of the London-based label, Sepia Records. Though these recordings are now in the public domain, they would probably be all but forgotten were it not for the efforts of labels like Sepia, whose output is exemplary of how the material should be treated... more> |
 Prom 62 Review: Sir Colin Davis and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester One of the strengths of the Proms is the way the festival brings together a healthy number of top-notch youth orchestras every year, and for Prom 62 it was the turn of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.The overriding impression of the concert was one of professionalism: not for nothing did Claudio Abbado... more> |
 COMPETITION: Win one of five copies of Howard Goodall's Eternal Light with Alfie Boe We've teamed up with EMI Classics and Rambert Dance Company to offer you the chance to win one of five copies of Eternal Light: A Requiem, a new work by the award-winning British composer and internationally acclaimed broadcaster, Howard Goodall. This unusual setting of the liturgical service... more> |
 Concert review: The Dresden Staatskapelle and Helene Grimaud in Edinburgh Two significant changes to the original advertised program brought interesting new perspectives to the Staatskapelle Dresden concert: Schuman's Piano Concerto was replaced by Beethoven's Concerto No 4, and there was the addition of Bernhard Lang's Monadology II to the end of the evening... more> |
 DVD Review: Sir Colin Davis conducts Gwyneth Jones in Wagner's Tannhauser As much as it lies well within the canon, productions of Tannhäuser are rarer than the high quality of the work deserves. Therefore, a new addition to the opera's discography is very welcome indeed, even when it's an old Bayreuth performance from thirty years ago.In fact, this was the first film ever to be made at... more> |
 CD review: Purcell's Complete Chamber Music on Brilliant Classics Brilliant Classics' recent release gathers together every piece of music by Purcell for solo harpsichord or instrumental ensemble. The Dutch record label have been in existence for over twelve years and, having experienced much success in their own country, are now becoming increasingly popular worldwide... more> |
 Prom 58 Review: Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic As America's oldest orchestra, and a band that can legitimately lay claim to being in the international elite, the New York Philharmonic was given two consecutive evenings to show its mettle to the Proms audience. Music Director Lorin Maazel pitted two twentieth century greats against Tchaikovsky... more> |
 Interview: Joyce DiDonato opens The Royal Opera's new season with Don Giovanni American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato goes from strength to strength as an artist. British audiences will remember her for her extraordinary assumption of the role of Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in a new production at Covent Garden. DiDonato returns to the role to close the season next July. more> |
 CD review: Gerald Finley's Dichterliebe on Hyperion As their previous collaborations for Hyperion have shown (extremely well received recordings of Ives and Barber songs), Gerald Finley and Julius Drake constitute something of a dream team. And this new recording of Dichterliebe, coupled with a selection of Schumann's other Heine settings, represents a master class of nuanced Lieder... more> |
 CD competition: Win a copy of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's new Brahms Symphony No 1 disc In our latest competition, we've teamed up with Soli Deo Gloria to offer our readers the chance to win a copy of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's exciting new Brahms CD with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. It is the first disc in a new series that sees Gardiner and his orchestra explore... more> |
 Edinburgh Festival Review: Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray Matthew Bourne's world première adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray is a dark, sinister, yet deeply poignant account of the illustrious work.
Bringing it into the present day the story shifted its focus to the modern world of catwalk fashion, where beauty, the beautiful and fame mix along with the darker side of... more> |
 CD review: Rebecca Saunders: choler, crimson, miniata Rebecca Saunders is a young British composer born in 1967 and based in Berlin. Her studies included time with Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe and with Nigel Osborne in Edinbugh. She has previously been the recipient of various awards in mainland Europe, including the Busoni Förderpreis from the Academy of Arts in Berlin... more> |
 CD review: The Philharmonia launches a new series with Mackerras and Dohnanyi on Signum Classics The first two CDs released by the Philharmonia Orchestra with Signum Classics are likely to be popular with music lovers. They work well on two levels: one can focus on the music or one can sort matters of minor importance while listening to the music in the background. I listened both... more> |
 CD review: The 2008 Broadway cast recording of Gypsy (Time-Life) Just as Patti LuPone's performance as Rose in the current Broadway revival of Styne and Sondheim's Gypsy is the stuff of legend, so too is the cast album very special. Yet wonderful as LuPone is on the CD, the attraction for me is the inclusion of seven bonus tracks that consist of cut or unused songs from the show, and they've... more> |
 Concert review: Antonio Pappano and the National Youth Orchestra at the Snape Proms Hooray for adventurous programming! The three works featured at the twenty-first Snape Prom were all takes on America – by Edgard Varèse, Sergei Rachmaninov and Aaron Copland. And how fascinatingly different they all were – from the atonal Varèse through the lush post-Romanticism... more> |
 Concert Review: Ian Bostridge at the Snape Proms What could go wrong? Three first class musicians in a light-hearted programme of songs for Bank Holiday Monday. Snape Maltings was full for The Bostridge Songbook, a selection of songs by Noel Coward, Kurt Weill and Cole Porter. But it was a pretty tepid evening. The format was simple – a grand piano, a couple of chairs and a table... more> |
 CD review: The 'New World' Symphony on period instruments (Naive) While Brahms, Bruckner and Wagner have all had the period instrument treatment – to a greater or lesser extent – Antonín Dvořák's best-known symphony only now receives a performance on authentic instruments courtesy of Emmanuel Krivine and his La Chambre Philharmonique, on Naïve.
Dvořák's 'New World'... more> |
 Prom 48 Review: Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich Orchestra in Mahler & Stockhausen Part of this season's programming at the Proms has been the happy idea of recreating concert programmes from the past. After the marathon of Prom 9, this three-parter from Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln set out to recreate the 1904 concert in Cologne's Gürzenich Hall... more> |
 CD review: Works by Gérard Grisey (Kairos) Both the works by Gérard Grisey presented here are new to CD. This release should therefore perhaps be of special interest to listeners in the UK, where neither work has been performed and where performances of Grisey's work in general are thin on the ground. With the UK premiere of Les Espaces Acoustiques,... more> |
 CD review: Bizet's The Pearl Fishers with Keenlyside and Evans on Chandos Probably forever condemned to live in the shadow of its better-known sister Carmen, The Pearl Fishers is nevertheless a work of considerable inspiration and one which is certainly worthy of the loving treatment given to it by Chandos in this new release. The piece belongs to the Zeitgeist that inspired Massenet's... more> |
 Edinburgh Festival Review: Ruhe with the Muziektheater Transparant Ruhe, presented by Muziektheater Transparant, makes us feel uncomfortable. As two Dutch citizens recount their lives as members of the SS during the Second World War, we are exposed to the notion that these volunteers were not single-minded fascists but were, in fact, ordinary citizens... more> |
 Concert Review: Prom 45: BBC SSO in Electronic Music by Jonathan HarveyStanding in the hall before tonight's concert, I overheard an usher warn two prospective concert-goers who had wandered in – 'Tonight's music will actually be all electronic music' – to which both frowned, before wandering back out of the building. For those of us who stayed on to witness the concert... more> |
 Concert Review: Gergiev's Sleeping Beauty and Belohlavek's Osud in Proms 46 and 47 On consecutive nights, the Proms gave opportunities for two conductors central to London's musical life to showcase music from their home countries. Valery Gergiev and Jiří Bělohlávek might be worlds apart in terms of temperament but as Principal and Chief Conductors of the LSO and BBCSO... more> |
 Concert review: Mischa Maisky at the Edinburgh International Festival Playing to a full house at the Queen's Hall, Mischa and Lily Maisky gave an outstanding performance of lesser-known gems of Russian Romantic song for the first half of his Edinburgh Festival performance. Mischa Maisky was eminently suited to the all-Russian programme, hailing from the tutelage... more> |
 DVD review: Haitink conducts Parsifal on Deutsche Grammophon Bernard Haitink's return to opera after a gap of several years was one of the most anticipated events of 2007. Despite a career that had seen him as Music Director of Glyndebourne and then Covent Garden for a period of over twenty years, he turned his back on the theatre after his departure from The Royal Opera... more> |
 Concert review: Kim Criswell sings music by George and Ira Gershwin at Cadogan Hall Continuing their summer of in-house-produced American songbook concerts, Cadogan Hall offered a programme featuring Broadway and West End star Kim Criswell. Although it was billed as being part of the Gershwin and Friends season, Criswell eschewed the temptation to follow too predictable... more> |
 Opera News: Opera Rara announces plans for 2009 Opera Rara, the world's foremost record label specialising in the bel canto repertoire, has disclosed initial plans for its recording schedule in 2009. In addition to releasing recordings of music by Offenbach, Donizetti, Mercadante, Ricci and Rossini made this year, the company will record three new accounts of operas by Rossini & Donizetti... more> |
 Concert review: Steve Reich Evening at the Edinburgh International Festival There are two loudspeakers, upturned, front-stage, one in front of the other. Suspended above each is a microphone, hung from far above. At the edge of the stage, a chair faces the arrangement from either side. Two male dancers walk on and face each other with the microphones between them. One withdraws... more> |
 Concert Review: Handel's Athalia with Richard Egarr at the Snape Proms For young performers there is huge excitement in evenings such as we enjoyed at Snape Maltings on Sunday night: glorious, alert rhythmic and authentic Handelian playing by the excellent Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra, expert leadership by the highly experienced conductor Richard Egarr... more> |
 DVD Review: Eugene Onegin from the 2007 Salzburg Festival (DG) The box for this new release of Eugene Onegin is emblazoned with positive press reactions at the time of its performance in last year's Salzburg Festival. 'Masterly down to the smallest detail', says one, but although Andrea Breth's production is excellently executed, there are times when it just comes across as too inconsistent... more> |
 Prom 41 Review: Handel's Belshazzar with Charles Mackerras It is hard to believe that Sir Charles Mackerras is an impressive 82 years old, merely because he continues in his illustrious career with no perceivable signs of slowing down. He received a rousing surge of applause as he entered on stage – something that the audience repeated with increasing fervour upon each... more> |
 CD Review: John Eliot Gardiner's 25th Volume of Bach Cantatas (SDG) While the obvious selling point of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's 'Bach Pilgrimage' through the complete cantatas is its comprehensiveness, as the series progresses it's also clear that each individual instalment is a voyage of discovery in itself. It would be nice to buy them all of course, but if that's not an option... more> |
 Opera News: Birtwistle's The Minotaur comes to Opus Arte DVD Opus Arte, the DVD company owned by the Royal Opera House, is to release Covent Garden's acclaimed production of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur on 1 October. Given its world premiere in April, The Minotaur opened to almost universally positive reviews: The Independent described it as... more> |
