| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 10-Jun-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Stunning Schumann from visiting Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House |
 “Europe’s answer to the ACO” was how composer Brett Dean described the Mahler Chamber Orchestra before its first concert in Sydney. Despite the similarity in names, the two are very different ensembles. The visiting orchestra is much larger – the string section alone had 33 players (10-8-6-6-3) – and as a consequence their music-making does not have the intimacy of the celebrated Australian orchestra. But in spite of these obvious differences, the two groups are indeed comparable in the calibre of their musicianship.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... | |
| 4-Sep-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 71: Mixed doubles from St Louis Symphony |
 On 3 September 1912, in a Proms concert which also featured a comedy overture by Granville Bantock and excerpts from Délibes’ ballet Coppélia, Henry Wood and his Queen’s Hall Orchestra gave the world première of Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, a landmark work in atonal expressionism which drew hisses from the hall audience.Read full review... | |
| 8-Jan-2012 Davies Symphony Hall | The San Francisco Symphony: An innovative programme but with few surprises |
 For last Sunday’s concert, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony chose a programme with a distinctly Eastern European flavour spanning almost a century and a half. They began with Liszt’s Prometheus, an overture to a set of choral pieces Liszt wrote for a festival celebrating the life and works of German literary philosopher Gottfried von Herder in 1850.
Read full review... | |
