| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 1-Mar-2013 Musikverein: Großer Saal | Cornelius Meister's Sibelius at the Vienna Musikverein doesn't quite take flight |
 Jean Sibelius is purported to have written part of his Symphony no. 5 after having witnessed a large flock of swans take flight from his home in rural Finland. Whether this story is apocryphal or not, the “swan theme” has become part of the Western musical subconscious, with quotations showing up in jazz and pop music for much of the last century. In this performance, Cornelius Meister, conducting the ORF RSO, made individual moments in this work sing, without really giving a good sense of its overall shape.
Read full review... | |
| 12-Dec-2012 Konzerthaus: Großer Saal | Meister, Mozart and Martinů with the RSO Wien |
| Cornelius Meister has long been a champion of young Czech composer Miroslav Srnka, not only as chief conductor of the RSO Wien but also in Heidelberg, where he was Generalmusikdirektor from 2005 until earlier this year. Reading Lessons is a work commissioned by Heidelberg that now comes to Vienna as part of a broader Srnka focus in the current RSO season (just last month Nicolas Hodges premiered a piano concerto with the orchestra), though presentation as part of the staid overture-concerto-symphony format has done his voice fewer favours this time around. Read full review... | |
| 15-Jun-2012 Konzerthaus: Großer Saal | Weinberger's Wallenstein in first Viennese performance since 1937 |
| Counting this present concert performance, public outings for Jaromir Weinberger’s 1937 opera Wallenstein may possibly have reached double digits, and such reception details, or indeed any information about the opera beyond a basic synopsis, would have made a welcome addition to the programme. With nothing but a few passing references in the scholarly literature this would have been a job for a specialist, but Vienna is not lacking in these and the programme note writer’s importance, after all, increases in direct proportion to the obscurity of the work performed. Read full review... | |
| 27-Apr-2012 Konzerthaus: Großer Saal | RSO Wien ends season with Elisabeth Leonskaja |
 For a description of Elisabeth Leonskaja’s formidable and eloquent pianism I find myself drawn to the opening bars of Rachmaninov’s G sharp minor Prelude, given in this concert as an encore. Fierce attack and rigidity in the right-hand semiquavers brought harshness to the rapid movement of the opening, though when the rhythmic pattern repeats itself you realized how perfectly even and, by extension, desensitized it was.Read full review... | |
