| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 27-Apr-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Music from dark times: London Philharmonic Orchestra at The Rest is Noise |
 Tonight’s concert was a prime example of the solid programming of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival. The concert, titled “Music from Dark Times”, included pieces by Webern, Berg, Bartók and Martinů, written between 1934 and 1941, which were indeed dark times for all these composers. In Vladimir Jurowski’s introduction, the conductor explained that this was one the most challenging evenings of the year for him and the orchestra.Read full review... | |
| 19-Jan-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Where the noise began: Richard Strauss at the Royal Festival Hall |
 A pub quiz question for you, dear reader: with which work did 20th century music begin? The rest is noise, Alex Ross's history of 20th century music, opens with Richard Strauss's 1905 opera Salome, focusing particularly on its final bars. As Princess Salome is crushed under the shields of King Herod's guard, the music turns to what Ross describes as "...a tumult... a howl... a shriek... In effect, the opera ends with eight bars of noise". Last night's all-Strauss concert, which closed with the Dance of the Seven Veils and the last scene from Salome marked the start of a year-long programme of events dedicated to telling the story of 20th century music, inspired by and named after Ross's book.
Read full review... | |
| 12-Dec-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Jurowski's endgame: Grisey and Mahler with the LPO |
.jpg) The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s latest “only connect” programme was inspired by its allocated date – 12/12/12. An equivalent numerical repetition will not recur for another century. Furthermore the reversal of the first figure to 21 coincides with the day signalled by the Mayan calendar as a day of ending. In keeping with this apocalyptic vantage point, Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (“Four Chants for Crossing the Threshold”, 1996–98) and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 (1901–02) were paired to map a journey from the dark abyss into a bright awakening.Read full review... | |
| 9-Dec-2012 Eastbourne Congress Theatre | Alexandra Silocea dazzles with the LPO and Jurowski at Congress Theatre, Eastbourne |
 It is often interesting to hear performers one knows well in a different setting, and this concert was a case in point for me. The London Philharmonic Orchestra have performed often in Eastbourne since the 1930s and at the Congress Theatre for the past seventeen seasons, but this was my first visit to the venue. Based on this concert, I am hopeful that it will not be my last. The reading of Brahms’ Tragic Overture allowed ample opportunity to assess the acoustic, finding that it favoured a bright violin timbre, whilst allowing the lower strings to be resonant.Read full review... | |
