| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 23-Mar-2013 St Barnabas Church, Ealing | West London Sinfonia's refreshing take on Bruckner 8 |
| Amateur orchestras attract loyal audiences who turn up whatever is on the programme, and this may account for the fact that both Adrian Brown of the Bromley Symphony Orchestra last week, and Philip Hesketh tonight, felt the need to provide an introductory talk. Indeed, the first half of this concert consisted of an extended introduction to Bruckner and his Eighth Symphony. Read full review... | |
| 16-Mar-2013 Langley Park Boys School: Centre for the Performing Arts | Bromley Symphony Orchestra make Bruckner 8 big in Beckenham |
| Conductor Adrian Brown began his introduction telling us of how he’d loved Bruckner since he was a teenager, and then went on to say that Bruckner’s symphonies were like “cathedrals in sound”. I confess to closing my eyes in jaded exasperation. Those of us who are privileged to have attended many performances of Bruckner symphonies, read many a programme note and heard quite a number of introductions, long for an appraisal of the works that might enlighten us without recourse to this overworked cliché. Read full review... | |
| 15-Mar-2013 Royal Academy of Music, Duke's Hall | Magical essence of Bruckner 2 revealed in a chamber arrangement at RAM |
 Before this chamber performance of Bruckner’s Second Symphony, Trevor Pinnock gave a short introductory talk, pointing out that, before the days of ubiquitous recording, music was always heard live, and chamber arrangements were an important aspect of disseminating music. He situated the present performance in the tradition of Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance, with the difference that on those occasions there was no applause allowed and – horror!Read full review... | |
| 2-Mar-2013 University Church of St Mary the Virgin | Hertford Bruckner Orchestra's tremendous evening of Bruckner and Wagner |
| The refurbishment of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, has been completed and it is now, once again, a glorious concert venue, well suited to the performance of a Bruckner symphony. The audience sit in the nave, the orchestra in front of them with the substantial stone organ screen that separates the nave from the chancel as an evocative backdrop. Read full review... | |
| 24-Feb-2013 Birmingham Conservatoire, Adrian Boult Hall | Birmingham Philharmonic and Byron Parish's Bruch and Bruckner marathon |
 The citizens of Birmingham were queueing up at the door when I arrived in good time for this concert, and the hall was nearly full when the concert began. All seats were unreserved and at the same price wherever you sat – an arrangement that has always appealed to me. Certainly it discriminates against those who can’t get there early, but at least it doesn’t discriminate against those who may be devoted music-lovers but not wealthy enough to afford what would have been a top-price seat in the centre stalls.
Read full review... | |
| 17-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Trenchant Beethoven and Bruckner from Haitink, Pires and the LSO |
 The London Symphony Orchestra presented the themes of the first movement of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto very nicely indeed, benefiting from the clarity, moderation and wisdom with which a lifetime of experience has endowed their conductor for this concert. The string sound was beautiful and full but with plenty of room for detail, and the woodwinds gave their gentle interjections with perfectly judged crescendos. All was right with the world and it sounded as though we were in for a nice, comfortable concerto as a prelude to the mighty Bruckner symphony to follow.
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| 14-Feb-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | RAM Chamber Orchestra plays Haydn symphonies at Kings Place |
 The finale of Haydn’s Symphony no. 90 is a dramatic, exciting C major event, with trumpets and drums, much to stir the heart and get the toes tapping. Everything’s bustling along very nicely towards its inevitable triumphant conclusion, which duly arrives. Applause! But, oh no! We’re caught out yet again by one of Haydn’s jokes, giving conductor Paul Brough the opportunity to swivel his head round at the audience and bestow upon them a ghastly grimace over his shoulder, before launching the music onward with increased ebullience towards its true finish.Read full review... | |
| 1-Dec-2012 St Peter's Church, Brockley | Harmony Sinfonia brings Bruckner to Brockley |
| Muffled up in a heavy coat, scarf and gloves, your intrepid reviewer travelled through the wild heart of the East End of London, from Whitechapel on the Overground, under the Thames to the equally rough and grubby realms of south-east London, to Brockley, making his way up the hill in the wintry darkness to St Peter’s Church. What a contrast upon entering the church! All was brightness and clarity, beautiful architecture, and warmth – the very virtues that characterised the performance Lindsay Ryan elicited from Harmony Sinfonia in this very enjoyable concert.
Read full review... | |
| 24-Oct-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Skrowaczewski and the LPO seek the infinite in Mozart and Bruckner |
 In 1930 a seven-year-old boy was walking along a street in the misty city of Lwów (then Poland, now Ukraine) when he heard music coming from an open window: He was transfixed: “I was in a trance. I was in heaven – the world didn’t exist for me.” So shattered was he by the experience that he fell ill with a fever. The music that had this overwhelming effect on the boy was the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. 82 years later it was our privilege to hear the grown man conduct that symphony with such a wealth of experience that it fitted him like a favourite old overcoat.Read full review... | |
| 18-Oct-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Helmchen is life-affirming in late Mozart; Dohnányi's Bruckner rather refined |
 Mozart finished the Piano Concerto no. 27 in January 1791, the year he was to die. His music had fallen out of favour in Vienna, he was very short of funds, and he and his wife had been repeatedly unwell over the previous years. These uncomfortable circumstances and his imminent death prompt some performers to see the wistful lyricism, the restraint – there are neither trumpets nor drums – and the tendency to slip into minor keys in the concerto as redolent of personal suffering and a valedictory relationship to the material world.Read full review... | |
| 29-Jul-2012 Ebrach Abbey | Bruckner's Eighth as a work-in-progress from Philharmonie Festiva |
 When you begin to get to know the symphonies of Anton Bruckner it’s not long before you come up against “the Bruckner problem”: the fact that there are multiple versions of many of the works, some of which originate from the composer himself who went through periods of revision-mania, while others are the results of collaborations with his supporters, and some were done without the composer’s involvement at all – and it has not always been clear to which of those categories some editions belong.Read full review... | |
| 26-Jun-2012 Royal College of Music: Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall | Haitink and the outstanding RCM Orchestra play Bruckner 8 |
 The opening theme of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 is announced in the depths of the orchestra; with the precise rhythm of the main theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th and something of the character of the Siegfried motive from Götterdämmerung, it contains energy and heroic aspiration, but also a harmonic instability that gives it a searching and unsettled quality. Throughout the movement it is treated to no end of variation, as though searching for a form in which it could at last settle.Read full review... | |
| 15-Jun-2012 St Martin-in-the-Fields | Canticum and Southbank Sinfonia light up St Martin-in-the-Fields |
.jpg) The two masses in this intriguing and very enjoyable programme made a thought-provoking contrast. Stravinsky was anxious that his mass be cold – indeed, as the bass singer Simon Scott Plummer’s useful programme notes told us, he wanted the music ‘very cold, absolutely cold, that will appeal directly to the spirit.’ Bruckner’s E minor mass was composed originally for outdoor performance, but that’s the only source of any coldness that might attach to his work, full as it is of heated expressive gestures that might also ‘appeal directly to the spirit’.Read full review... | |
| 14-Jun-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | Funeral music from Purcell and Bruckner frames Pires' magical Mozart |
 The brass, winds and percussion of the LSO opened the concert with a powerful, dramatic rendition of Purcell’s Music for the funeral of Queen Mary, arranged to sharpen the effect for modern ears by Steven Stucky. It is a piece for public mourning, and the great strokes on the timpani and bass drum bring to mind those fireman’s funeral strokes that introduce the finale of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, but with an added kaleidoscope of colours provided by xylophones, tubular bells and piano.Read full review... | |
| 20-May-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | A Bruckner 5 of Integrity and Nobility from Haitink and the Concertgebouw |
 Bruckner moved to Vienna in 1868 to take up the post of Professor of Organ, Harmony and Counterpoint at the Conservatory. Seven years later, in 1875, he was still ruing the day he had left his local city of Linz: only one symphony had been performed, his income was meagre and he envisaged going to debtors’ jail, “where I can descant to my heart’s content on my folly in ever coming to Vienna.” But the day after writing that letter he began his Fifth Symphony, starting with the Adagio and its sorrowful oboe theme.Read full review... | |
| 12-May-2012 St Barnabas Church, Ealing | A UK Première of a Bruckner 9 Completion from Ealing Symphony Orchestra |
 Extraordinary things happen in St Barnabas Church, Ealing. On a couple of occasions, 32 pianists have played 32 Beethoven piano sonatas over one weekend, and every so often the building is host to Ealing Symphony Orchestra, who dare to embark on programmes that feature works you just will not hear anyone else perform – first public performances of Ives’ Orchestral Set no. 3, and William Alwyn’s Violin Concerto, for example. Tonight’s UK première of a completion of Bruckner’s Symphony no.Read full review... | |
| 20-Apr-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Barenboim's Bruckner Project rises to an outstanding finale at the Southbank |
 After performing the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies of Anton Bruckner on Monday and Tuesday, Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin took no rest, but travelled to Paris to perform the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies in the Salle Pleyel to keep themselves occupied on Wednesday and Thursday. And now, here they were back again to complete the London ‘Bruckner Project’ and so repeat their previous night’s performance of the 9th.Read full review... | |
| 17-Apr-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Barenboim's Bruckner 8 at the Southbank falls short of its promise |
 Of Bruckner’s mighty symphonies, the Eighth is the mightiest. Dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria (although at one stage the repeatedly lovelorn 63 year old composer sought to dedicate it to a young girl he met at the opera, Marie Demar) Bruckner’s hints at its programme speak of such things as ‘the annunciation of death’ in the first movement and the grand meeting of the three emperors of Austria, Germany and Russia, galloping Cossacks storm in with trumpet fanfares, for the finale.Read full review... | |
| 16-Apr-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Staatskapelle Berlin & Barenboim supremely eloquent in Mozart and Bruckner |
 Bruckner wrote to the conductor, Artur Nikisch, before the first performance of his 7th Symphony in 1885 that there are many important tempo changes that should be observed, but not marked in the score. Daniel Barenboim has taken Bruckner’s advice to heart and his performance was, for the most part, masterly in its use of flexible tempi. It was a joy to hear the symphony set off at a true Allegro moderato - none of the indulgent Adagio that often attends this wonderful dream theme (this melody apparently came to Bruckner in a dream).Read full review... | |
| 3-Mar-2012 University Church of St Mary the Virgin | Hertford Bruckner Orchestra rise to the challenge of Bruckner's Eighth |
| The Hertford Bruckner Orchestra is really quite an extraordinary phenomenon. It is an ensemble of mainly amateur musicians, centred round Hertford College, Oxford but involving players from the University, the city and elsewhere in the UK – founded principally to perform the symphonies of Anton Bruckner! Read full review... | |
| 9-Feb-2012 Philharmonie: Großer Saal | Rattle & Berlin Philharmonic present Bruckner's Ninth with Finale |
 Mat Henneck EMI.jpg) The Adagio of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony differs in several ways from its predecessors, one being that its climax is built on its most grief-stricken and agonised theme. The rising D major trumpet motive that might have delivered a glorious vision at the summit seems forgotten, and instead the wrenching leap of a ninth that opens the movement is piled up into a massive dissonance. In these performances by the Berlin Philharmonic it goes without saying that the orchestral sound was totally overwhelming.Read full review... | |
| 4-Feb-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | London's Royal Festival Hall Consecrated by Nézet-Séguin's Magnificent Bruckner |
 Marco Borggreve-1.jpg) Before the concert began, Yannick Nézet-Séguin gave a short introductory speech that, in effect, would have the Royal Festival Hall consecrated for the evening as a place of worship. He spoke of Bruckner’s deep Catholic faith, and how the programme was constructed to reflect that, with a symphony dedicated ‘To dear God’, and observing Bruckner’s last wish for the symphony: that his Te Deum be used as the finale in the event that he failed to complete it.Read full review... | |
| 2-Feb-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Mendelssohn and Bruckner from Steinbacher, Masur & the Philharmonia |
 This was a programme that presented what are probably each of its composers' most popular works, played by one of London’s very best orchestras, under the direction of one of Europe’s most venerable and respected conductors. Add to that the winning presence of a young and vibrant soloist, and it is not surprising that the concert was well attended. And on the whole the concert delivered what it promised.Read full review... | |
| 29-Dec-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | Raymond Gubbay presents Beethoven's Ninth: Christmas at the Barbican |
 Raymond Gubbay Ltd loads the grey interregnum between Christmas and New Year at the Barbican with sundry spectacular delights, such as The Last Night of the Christmas Proms, The Sound of Musicals, Movie Music Classics, and building to the great climax of A Viennese New Year’s Eve Gala. In the midst of this extravaganza stands the Beethoven’s Ninth concert.Read full review... | |
| 30-Nov-2011 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Bruckner's First crowns a musical collage from Jurowski and the LPO |
 All three works in this programme were written by composers in mid-life - late 30s, early 40s - and all worked within the Austro-German tradition, but one would be surprised to find they had much else in common. The performances this evening did, however, manage to forge an unexpected congruence between them.
Read full review... | |
| 27-Nov-2011 Brighton Dome, Concert Hall | Blazing Bruckner in Brighton |
 After the overture, whose two movements, fast and slow, were adequately dispatched by a suitably small orchestra, the audience mistook the arrival of an orchestral horn player as that of the soloist himself, and burst into applause, which turned to laughter as the mistake became obvious. And this atmosphere of benign jollity was continued by the soloist proper, Martin Owen, who gave us a comic cadenza in which short blirrups were followed by a stunned stare at the audience as if he himself was surprised at what he’d just played.Read full review... | |
| 26-Nov-2011 St John's Smith Square | Powerful performances of Campkin and Bruckner by Fulham's finest |
 The Fulham Camerata is a wonderfully inclusive group that mixes professionals, semi-professionals and keen amateurs - recruited without audition and receiving support and training from the professionals. The quality of their singing, on the evidence of last night’s concert, is first rate, and the sheer fullness of tone and response to dynamics in Bruckner’s motet Os Justi was quite glorious.Read full review... | |
| 16-Nov-2011 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Breathtaking Tchaikovsky from Janine Jansen; a not-so-Romantic Bruckner from Osmo Vänskä |
 Janine Jansen’s performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto carried all before it: she played with such passion and commitment, with such seaching beauty and endless variety of tone, it left the orchestral contribution seeming somehow colourless and inadequate to the occasion.Read full review... | |
| 13-Nov-2011 Conway Hall | London Mozart Trio play Brahms, Shostakovich and Schubert at very short notice |
| The scheduled programme had included Trios by Debussy and Chaminade, and I’d done my homework so that at least I’d have some idea about what was what. But very unfortunately the Fiorini Trio had had to cancel at very short notice - so it was extraordinary that the concert took place at all, thanks to the London Mozart Trio standing in.
Read full review... | |
| 10-Nov-2011 University of Nottingham, Lakeside Arts Centre: Djanogly Recital Hall | Fitzwilliam Quartet give revelatory performance of Bruckner's String Quintet at Nottingham University |
| Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge consists of 15 fugues (the last unfinished) and 4 canons, with no instrumentation specified - hence the subject of much discussion and controversy. The Fitzwilliam Quartet chose to play three of the fugues, beginning with the ‘simplest’, where the theme of the 14 completed fugues is presented. Read full review... | |
| 5-Nov-2011 St Mary's Church, South Woodford | Stocken's Archangels fly over Woodford; Icknield Ensemble delight with Dvorak Quintet |
| I went to this concert primarily so as to be able to hear Frederick Stocken’s new work, Archangels. The performance of that work was preceded by the Choir of St Mary’s Woodford singing sixteenth century church music, conducted by Mr Stocken. Read full review... | |
| 2-Nov-2011 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Benedetti & Elschenbroich make love in Brahms' Double; LPO play magnificently in Eschenbach's Bruckner |
 One wonders what each of the composers might have thought about being programmed in the same concert. Brahms had some unpleasant things to say about Bruckner, famously that his symphonies were a swindle; and Bruckner remarked that Brahms is Brahms, but he, Bruckner, preferred his own stuff. The transition from the Brahms in the first half to the Bruckner in the second was as though one had stepped out of the civilised confines of the well-furnished drawing room into the vast clarity of an open-air mountainscape.Read full review... | |
| 30-Oct-2011 Conway Hall | Stunning Appassionata from Takenouchi bonus before Beara Trio's fine Conway Hall concert |
| These Conway Hall Sunday Evening Concerts are always good value, but this one was especially generous: there was a ‘pre-concert recital’, 40 mins before the concert proper. As we were taking our seats, pianist Hiro (Hiroaki) Takenouchi was still driving frantically to the venue, having been severely held up in traffic. Three minutes after arriving he stood before the expectant audience, with no time to warm up, gauge the piano, ready his mind, and was required to play Beethoven’s Appassionata, no less. What to do? Read full review... | |
| 23-Oct-2011 Philharmonie: Großer Saal | Bruckner's Ninth gets a stunning Finale with Simon Rattle and the German Youth Orchestra |
| When Bruckner died in 1896 he had done much work on his Ninth Symphony and the finale was almost complete. Unfortunately the executors failed to secure Bruckner's rooms, nor did they ensure that the finale manuscripts were delivered to the Imperial Library. So many pages are missing, and those that do exist are in many locations world-wide. Very roughly speaking, two thirds of the finale exist in five fragments, with many sketches and discarded manuscript papers which help indicate what should fill the gaps. Read full review... | |
| 30-Aug-2011 Royal Albert Hall | An Immense Journey - from C major to C major |
 This was a tremendous concert. That is to say it presented two of the grandest works in their genre, Mozart’s longest piano concerto and Bruckner’s longest completed symphony, moving from Mozart’s imposing C major maestoso entrance to, nearly 2 hours of music later, Bruckner’s blazing C major transfiguration.Read full review... | |
| 31-Jul-2011 Ebrach Abbey | Triumphant Bruckner Festival |
 The Ebrach Summer of Music, Bruckner Festival is an extraordinary event. Ebrach is a small town, with a couple of shops, a café, an inn and a hotel, a disused railway line, a mere 1,000 occupants - and a gigantic Abbey attached to a monastery that was closed in 1803 and whose buildings now serve as a prison!Read full review... | |
| 21-Jun-2011 St John's Smith Square | What a night for the horns! |
| The Salomon Orchestra launched into a blistering performance of the opening paragraph of Richard Strauss’s tone poem, Don Juan. It opened with a portrayal of a Don Juan of such indomitable vitality, that it left you reeling before it and more than happy to sink into the caresses of the seduced beauty portrayed in the first love scene, and it spoke volumes for the virtuosity of this orchestra. The oboe and the leader, Tara Persaud, delivered enchanting solos to melt the heart, and the great horn theme strode with heroic splendour over its high string tremolo.
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| 16-Jun-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | "Time out of Mind" in Mozart and Bruckner |
| When this deeply thoughtful account of Bruckner’s 4th Symphony came to its end I was reminded of a line from Bob Dylan’s song "It ain’t dark yet, (but it’s getting there)" on his album Time Out of Mind, where he sings, "I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still." You had the sense of an immense journey having taken place, but at its close you realised that you had somehow been in the same place throughout. Read full review... | |
| 7-Mar-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | LSO play Bruckner |
| Three enormous ear-splitting tam-tams were employed in Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorem, the largest being truly gigantic, maybe 10ft (3m.) in diameter. When we reassembled after the interval to hear the LSO perform Bruckner’s 9th symphony, this massive tam-tam was still centre-stage, at the back lowering over the orchestra. Read full review... | |
| 7-Mar-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | Fantastic Bruckner Quintet |
 Heath Quartet – Oliver Heath, Cerys Jones, Gary Pomeroy, Christopher Murray, with Adam Newman
Before Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO embarked on Messiaen's 'Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorem' and Bruckner's 9th Symphony, there was a free concert in the Guildhall Artists at the Barbican series, in which the Heath Quartet and Adam Newman treated us to a truly enchanting performance of Bruckner’s Quintet. The quintet does not receive as many performances as it deserves, and often all you get is the glorious Adagio on its own as a piece for string orchestra. And sometimes you feel that chamber performers do not really understand Bruckner: this being his only mature chamber work, they may not be so familiar with his symphonic writing. But on this occasion it sounded as though the players had really thought through and discovered the structure, the sense and the emotional heart of the piece.
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| 14-Jan-2011 St George's, Hanover Square | Haydn in Hanover Square |
 This was a remarkable concert, and not merely because of the redecorated and refurbished interior of St George’s Hanover Square, nor just for the stunningly dramatic cleaned and renovated painting of The Last Supper by William Kent that loomed over us from behind the performers, but primarily for as good a performance of Haydn Op. 50/1 as you’re ever likely to hear!Read full review... | |
| 3-Dec-2010 St Anne's, Limehouse | Heroism in Limehouse |
 I thought it best, given the sub-zero temperatures, to get out of the house and save on heating bills, and so I consulted www.bachtrack.com to see what might be on, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Sibelius 2nd was to be performed in a local church. ‘That’ll do nicely,’ thought I – and so it did, but my modest expectations for amateur orchestra in a local church were exceeded by a considerable margin - indeed, they were blown apart.
Read full review... | |
