| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 10-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Quartet for the End of Time at Queen Elizabeth Hall |
 The fascinating Rest is Noise festival at Southbank Centre has now reached its mid-point, with the focus on music created out of oppression and war. In Friday night’s chamber concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall two pieces written in the most straitened circumstances during the Second World War were presented: Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, a haunting lament for the tragic victims of the war and conflict in general, and Messiaen’s extraordinary Quatuor pour la fin du temps (“Quartet for the End of Time”), composed and premièred in a German prisoner of war camp.Read full review... | |
| 4-May-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Birdsong in Birmingham: Mitsuko Uchida with Andris Nelsons and the CBSO |
 It wasn’t only Mitsuko Uchida’s hands that were agile. Her arrival on stage was accompanied by the deepest bow imaginable, bending from the waist until she resembled a tuning fork. Such Japanese formality was paired with a warm, glowing smile and a real connection with players and audience alike.
Read full review... | |
| 20-Apr-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | Modernist Mozart at the end of time: Tetzlaff at 92Y |
 It’s easiest to describe Christian Tetzlaff’s approach to playing the violin by what he isn’t trying to do. He is not trying to play as beautifully as possible, in the conventional sense. He is not trying to sound like a nightingale, soaring long, honeyed lines above an accompaniment. He is not, in other words, trying to make his violin sound as the mind’s ear instinctively thinks it should. That is too easy, after all, and it inhibits a truer sense of expression.Read full review... | |
| 11-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Messiaen, Mozart and Murail offer a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds at the New York Philharmonic |
 “Synesthesia” is a neurological condition that causes an involuntary sensory experience to be provoked from an initial stimulation of a different sensory or cognitive pathway – for instance, automatically associating colors with numbers, letters, or sounds. Olivier Messiaen, a 20th-century French composer, organist, and ornithologist, “heard” colors in all music, whether tonal, modal, or serial. His own compositions are undeniably colorful themselves, dating back to his early composition Les offrandes oubliées (“The Forgotten Offerings”).Read full review... | |
