| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 30-May-2013 Montreal Chamber Music Festival at St George's Church | The Emerson String Quartet performs their first concert with new cellist Paul Watkins | Andrew Crust |
.jpg) Tonight’s concert with the Emerson String Quartet at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival was a truly special event. After 34 years, the world famous, multiple Grammy-winning quartet has made its first personnel change. Tonight marked their very first concert with their new cellist Paul Watkins.
Read full review... | ||
| 21-May-2013 Leeds College of Music: The Venue | Haydn, Bartók and Beethoven from the Endellion Quartet in Leeds | Sam Wigglesworth |
 Few modern string quartets can boast a line-up that has been as stable as that of the Endellion’s. In a remarkable 27 years of playing together its four members have explored and recorded a sizeable proportion of the quartet repertoire, as well as exploring new territory in works such as Thomas Adès’ dazzling Arcadiana. Nevertheless, with such a vast pool of music to draw from, there are still plenty of masterpieces with which the group has yet to become acquainted.
Read full review... | ||
| 11-May-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | The Tokyo String Quartet in musical farewells of Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók at 92Y | Evan Mitchell |
 The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók. The Tokyo Quartet’s personnel has changed since its inception in 1969 – its current members are violinists Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura, and cellist Clive Greensmith – and the group has existed in its current form since 2002.
Read full review... | ||
| 27-Apr-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Music from dark times: London Philharmonic Orchestra at The Rest is Noise | Renée Reitsma, ypgtcm.blogspot.com |
 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... | ||
| 26-Apr-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | The Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer make a legendary pairing in Birmingham | Peter Marks |
 The Budapest Festival Orchestra are a relatively well-kept secret, although goodness knows why. Perhaps it is something to do with their young age (formed in 1983) or their somewhat utilitarian name. They were ranked number nine in a rather arbitrary Gramophone magazine survey of the best orchestras in the world, but on the evidence of this concert I would have had no quibbles if they had been placed in the top three.
Read full review... | ||
| 4-Apr-2013 St Lawrence Centre For The Arts: Jane Mallett Theatre | The Tokyo String Quartet's farewell tour in Toronto is crowned by Bartók | Stanley Fefferman |
 More than 40 years ago, violist Kazuhide Isomura got together with three other Japanese students at the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan and formed the Tokyo String Quartet. After touring the globe for upward of 4,000 performances, more than 40 for Music Toronto, with 40 albums and nearly 40 years of teaching at Yale, last night, Mr Isomura played his final Music Toronto concert. This year, after a “Farewell” world tour, the quartet will disband.
Read full review... | ||
| 3-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Boston Symphony Orchestra soars through Hindemith, Rachmaninov and Bartók | Rebecca Lentjes |
 You might not think that a conductor nearing his 80th birthday and leading an orchestra from a swivel chair would be as effective as a conductor in full health, but you would be wrong. On Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra careened through a delightfully energetic performance led by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, a frequent guest conductor for this orchestra and several others across North America. Mr Frühbeck de Burgos, even while seated, drew crisp interpretations of three works composed within a thirteen-year span, from 1930 to 1943.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Mar-2013 Sage: Hall One | Distant Light with Northern Sinfonia | Jane Shuttleworth |
 On a day when Christians around the world reflect on suffering, torment and lost hope, but with the distant promise of light soon to return, the strings of Northern Sinfonia offered a programme that could serve as a secular, humanist alternative to Good Friday; music written in dark times and troubled places of 20th-century Europe, music that is at times brooding and disturbed, sadly nostalgic but which never seems to lose its hope, or faith in that distant light.
Read full review... | ||
| 21-Mar-2013 Salle Pleyel | Dutilleux, Bartók, Beethoven: Paavo Järvi's night of forgotten masterpieces with the Orchestre de Paris | Leopold Tobisch |
 The opening of Henri Dutilleux’s Symphony no. 1, with its distinctive pizzicato opening full of tension and curiosity, opened the concert not with a bang but rather a seductive lure. The gradual building of orchestral forces in the opening movement, demonstrating Dutilleux’s supreme skill in orchestration, was evoked with excellent nuance by the Orchestre de Paris, contrasted with the sultry octave rises in the strings that follow.Read full review... | ||
| 8-Mar-2013 Cadogan Hall | Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra performs a pan-European programme at Cadogan Hall | Julia Savage |
 In its sixth season, the Zurich International Concert Series has attracted some well-known, but less-heard orchestral names to London. The series enables the full force of orchestras to be heard in the relatively intimate space of Cadogan Hall, which is otherwise famous for attracting chamber ensembles of the highest calibre.
Read full review... | ||
| 24-Feb-2013 St Mary's Cathedral | RSNO chamber musicians play Bartók, Beethoven and Brahms | Alan Coady |
 Built by the prolific George Gilbert Scott (1811–78), St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow was opened in 1871. Now featuring Gwyneth Leech’s striking 1990 murals, including a triptych of the Easter Passion set in nearby Kelvingrove Park, it is a frequent venue for events such as this RSNO chamber concert. From a dais placed in the crossing of this intimate cathedral setting, a string quartet (later to be augmented to clarinet quintet) enjoyed an acoustic which, save for one brief, busy moment, offered a winning mix of clarity and warmth.Read full review... | ||
| 17-Feb-2013 Shriver Hall | Anti-diva Magdalena Kožená conquers Baltimore | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
 On Sunday night Shriver Hall was packed with Baltimore opera fans who had gathered to enjoy a solo recital of the internationally acclaimed opera “anti-diva” Magdalena Kožená. True to her reputation, this Czech mezzo-soprano came on stage dressed in a casual black gown, which (ignoring the dress change tradition established by her stage colleagues) she chose to wear all night long. The program that Kožená picked for her Shriver Hall debut turned out to be equally bold and untraditional.Read full review... | ||
| 13-Feb-2013 Théâtre Rialto | Classical music revisited with Collectif 9 | Andrew Crust |
 The string nonet Collectif 9 offers its public something truly as valuable as it is rare: classical repertoire “revisited with passion and fearlessness”. They are a group of very young and fiercely talented string players, many of whom play in the city’s professional orchestras. They enthusiastically align themselves with the growing movement called Classical Revolution which seeks to bring “art music” to a variety of venues and audiences with the goal of obliterating the stigmas of musty conventionalism and tradition far too often associated with the genre.
Read full review... | ||
| 13-Feb-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Blistering Bartók from Kavakos and the Concertgebouw in New York | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 Two programmes, four works, and nothing written before 1880: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and their chief conductor Mariss Jansons certainly know how to play to their strengths on tour. What strengths they are, too. This orchestra generates a uniquely warm sound, maintains scrupulously clean textures, and possesses technical skills that surpass even the finest of other orchestras.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Jan-2013 Le Poisson Rouge | West-Eastern Divan Orchestra visits New York's West Village | Kay Kempin |
 No ordinary youth orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra causes quite a stir wherever it performs. Comprised of a mix of Arab, Israeli and Spanish musicians, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is committed to coexistence and a peaceful solution to the violent conflict in the Middle East. With such a volatile mission statement – and with Daniel Barenboim at the helm – the orchestra can hardly escape media headlines and political controversy. Still, the group continues to use music as a platform to build bridges between contrasting cultures and to promote peace.
Read full review... | ||
| 26-Jan-2013 Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama: Dora Stoutzker Hall | The Welsh Sinfonia play Britten and Michael Csány-Wills | Philip May |
 In light of this year’s Britten centenary, The Welsh Sinfonia has slipped its foot in the door with what will be one of many commemorative concerts to be given over the next eleven months.
Read full review... | ||
| 20-Jan-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | LA Phil finds focus on Bartók, Kodály – but not on Eötvös | Ted Ayala |
 The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s January 20 concert, the last in its “Focus on Eötvös” mini-residency, may as well have been called “Focus on Hungary.” The small, landlocked country, with barely over 9 million residents, has exerted – and continues to exert – a powerful influence on music. Even discounting Franz Liszt – ethnically Hungarian, but with a cultural outlook more tilted to Vienna and Paris than to Budapest – there is no disputing Hungary’s vast, even outsize contribution to musical culture.
Read full review... | ||
| 19-Jan-2013 Severance Hall | Widmann, Bartók and Beethoven with Joshua Bell and The Cleveland Orchestra | Timothy Robson |
 Severance Hall was packed this weekend for a rare appearance by violinist Joshua Bell with the Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst conducting. There should have been no disappointment; the concert was brilliantly executed from beginning to end. This review is based on the performance of Saturday, 19 January.
Read full review... | ||
| 17-Jan-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Living music: John Adams with the London Symphony Orchestra | Paul Kilbey |
 January 2013 is turning out to be a pretty major month for 20th-and 21st-century classical music in London’s cultural mainstream, with Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur roaring loudly at the Royal Opera House and the Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise series, a year-long celebration of 20th-century music, launching currently. But the London Symphony Orchestra showed on Thursday night that it is perfectly possible to tell eloquent, provocative stories about the 20th century through classical music with nothing more than a single, conventional orchestral programme.
Read full review... | ||
| 10-Jan-2013 St Lawrence Centre For The Arts: Jane Mallett Theatre | Tokyo String Quartet breaks boundaries with Bartók's String Quartets 4 and 5 | Stanley Fefferman |
 Bartók used folk music to find his own voice as a composer of classical music. He roamed the Balkans, north Africa and the Middle East to rediscover models of what was really music to his ears, much in the same spirit as Picasso and others searched out models of primitive representations to refresh what we see. Last evening, the Tokyo String Quartet broke some boundaries and brought back the original freshness of Bartók’s discoveries as well as the innovations of Joseph Haydn, the inventor the string quartet.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-Dec-2012 St Barnabas Presbyterian Church | Music of Central and Eastern Europe: Bartók, Martinů and Dvořák in Dallas | Evan Mitchell |
 The Dallas-area series Chamber Music International presented its second program of the season this Friday and Saturday evening. (This review is of the second concert, at St Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson, Texas.) Pianist Joyce Yang began the evening with Béla Bartók’s suite Out of Doors, followed by the Three Madrigals for violin and viola by Bohuslav Martinů, played by Jun Iwasaki and Atar Arad.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Nov-2012 Carnegie Hall: Weill Recital Hall | The towering sound of Tessa Lark at Carnegie Hall | Joseph Pfender |
 Tessa Lark’s recital of violin music on Wednesday evening, in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, was a brilliant showcase of a promising young virtuoso, carefully planned and beautifully executed. Having completed her Master’s degree at the New England Conservatory in May of this year, Tessa Lark is the winner of the 2012 Naumburg Violin Award and already has a constellation of awards, medals, festival performances and tours to her name, in locales from Santa Fe to Beijing.Read full review... | ||
| 24-Nov-2012 Albertinum | The Dresden Philharmonic with Tzimon Barto and Alexander Liebreich | Matthew Lynch |
 The regular home of the Dresden Philharmonic, Dresden’s Kulturpalast, is currently being renovated, and as a result the orchestra is taking residence in a number of venues around the city, including the city theatre, and the renowned Frauenkirche. However, the majority of their concerts this season are taking place in the Albertinum, one of Dresden’s many art galleries. The large hall where the concerts take place is an interesting space for a concert, lacking the imposing 19th-century grandeur of most concert halls, having instead a very modern feel.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Nov-2012 La Maison Symphonique de Montréal | Experimental programming: 100 metronomes at the Maison Symphonique | Andrew Crust |
 Kent Nagano took to the stage tonight, microphone in hand, slowly becoming encircled by a forest of empty music stands, 50 in all. It is only natural to provide a word of explanation for a concert which contained Ligeti’s Fluxus piece Poème symphonique, scored for 100 metronomes, and Reich’s Clapping Music, amidst more standard works. In his usual melange of sincere French and his more comfortable English, he delivered a speech which was, if not long-winded, exhaustive in its description of the plan behind tonight’s concert and the works within.Read full review... | ||
| 31-Aug-2012 Großes Festspielhaus | Leonidas Kavakos, Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Salzburg | Zwölftöner |
 Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw can claim the most enduring historical connection with Mahler’s symphonies of any orchestra due to their erstwhile principal conductor Willem Mengelberg, who invited Mahler to Amsterdam to conduct the Third and Fourth Symphonies in 1903 and 1904 respectively and after the composer’s death became one of his chief disciples.Read full review... | ||
| 26-Aug-2012 Usher Hall | Budapest Festival Orchestra in triumphant Bartók and Mahler | Jeremy Morris |
| The Budapest Festival Orchestra has played in Edinburgh before to great critical acclaim. Consequently, it was only to be expected that their concert last Sunday would be well attended, despite a late change of soloist. In fact, it was a virtual sell-out and we were not disappointed.
Read full review... | ||
| 13-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 42: Prokofiev, Neuwirth and Bartók with the Philharmonia | Carla Finesilver, silverfin.wordpress.com |
 As I write this, I have just realised that someone in a neighbouring flat is listening to some rather loud jazz, a man is shouting outside, probably at the car alarm that has just gone off, and there is a bee buzzing around my room. It’s not that I didn’t hear these noises until now, but I’ve been listening to some Olga Neuwirth, and had just assumed they were all samples forming part of the eclectically diverse sound collage that characterises much of her work.
Read full review... | ||
| 10-Aug-2012 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Death and life: Lutosławski, Bartók, and Mozart at the Mostly Mozart Festival | Evan Mitchell |
 New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival continued Friday evening with three works, all marvelous and presented in reverse-chronological order. After Witold Lutosławski’s Muzyka żałobna, the orchestra and conductor Louis Langrée were joined by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3, and the concert concluded with Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in E flat major.
Read full review... | ||
| 6-Aug-2012 Großes Festspielhaus | Eschenbach, Lupu and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in Salzburg | Zwölftöner |
 Established in 1987 by Leonard Bernstein, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra last year joined the exclusive club of youth orchestras to have performed at the Salzburg Festival and was immediately invited back for a return appearance this season. Performing under their principal conductor Christoph Eschenbach, the current crop of young musicians lost no time showing us why, with ebullient playing supported by athletic discipline.
Read full review... | ||
| 11-Jul-2012 Pittville Pump Room | Back to 1915: Kraggerud, Isserlis and more at the Cheltenham Music Festival | Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres |
 The concert opened with BBC newsreader Julia Somerville, summarising news from the year 1915 at an old-fashioned broadcasting desk complete with microphone. It was informative, and set the scene for this recital, one in a series of ‘time capsule’ concerts, solely featuring music composed in 1915 – including two of Debussy’s last chamber pieces.
Read full review... | ||
| 28-May-2012 Montreal Chamber Music Festival at St George's Church | Strong yet Soft: The Versatile James Ehnes | Sarah Brown |
 Violin virtuoso James Ehnes gave a concert of works by Béla Bartók on May 28th at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. Just the day before, Ehnes had performed an equally challenging program of completely different repertoire - works by Ravel (the duo, the trio, and the quartet). Both performances were of the highest quality, and showcased a performer with unparalleled command of his instrument.
Read full review... | ||
| 27-May-2012 Concertgebouw: Main Hall | Sunny music from deFilharmonie and Jaap van Zweden | Renée Reitsma, ypgtcm.blogspot.com |
 Flemish orchestra deFilharmonie came to Amsterdam on a sunny Sunday morning and brought even sunnier music with them. Lead by Jaap van Zweden, who knows the Concertgebouw like no other, they played a program containing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, two works of incredible high energy that left many a concertgoer with a smile on her face.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | The Agony and the Ecstasy: LSO Performs Bartók and Szymanowski | David Fay |
 Every now and then I like to experiment. Reviewing a concert in which I know none of the music can be frightening, but also exciting and – always – surprising. Thus I was slightly apprehensive but wholly enthusiastic about attending this LSO concert featuring works unknown to me by Bartók and Szymanowski. And after all, this music is not immediate, with show-stopping, crowd-pulling, radio-playing-in-the-background “listenability”.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Apr-2012 Herbst Theater | Eliot Fisk and Richard Stoltzman: Food for Thought | Brenden Guy |
 As I sat in Herbst Theater last night awaiting the appearance of clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and guitarist Eliot Fisk, my mind wandered to the analogy of food and wine. With an abundance of delectable cuisine and fine wine across the world, the combination of such pairings are endless. However, the choice requires special consideration, and can be the difference between a superb dining experience and an unsatisfactory one. Having never experienced such a unique program as that presented Saturday night by Chamber Music San Francisco, I wondered if this would prove to be a successful pairing.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Apr-2012 Concertgebouw: Main Hall | James MacMillan's Violin Concerto in the Concertgebouw | Renée Reitsma, ypgtcm.blogspot.com |
 James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto was first performed in 2010, but this afternoon, at the Dutch premiere, was the first time he conducted it. It’s quite an extraordinary piece, so full of ideas that you might wonder if he couldn’t have written two concertos instead of just the one. But when it comes to MacMillan, this potential overload of ideas actually works really well. The music doesn’t need to be subdued or relaxing; what he delivers is a powerful and highly impressive concerto.
Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2012 Nasher Sculpture Center | Virtuosity of Gesture: Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madzar | Evan Mitchell |
 For its season finale, Soundings: New Music at the Nasher presented violinist Anthony Marwood and pianist Aleksandar Madzar in a program advertised as “a dialogue of caprice and masterpiece.” The evening featured works ranging from two or three minutes to half an hour in length, dating from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1980s, all thoughtfully presented and – last but not least – played quite well.
Read full review... | ||
| 4-Apr-2012 BBC Hoddinott Hall | BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Stravinsky, Beethoven, Bartók | Verity Quaite |
 The announcement by the presenter that Stravinsky did not intend Symphonies of Wind Instruments to please the audience or arouse their passions was greeted with titters of laughter. An overheard conversation during the interval signalled that the number of late arrivals to the concert was suspected to be ‘because they didn’t want to sit through the Stravinsky’. Yet the warmth of the applause demonstrated what a commendable performance this was, and that the time is ripe for performances of Stravinsky’s more challenging repertoire.Read full review... | ||
| 3-Apr-2012 Southbank Centre: Purcell Room | Movements and Expressions: Alda Dizdari at the Southbank | Arthur Keegan-Bole |
 Violinist Alda Dizdari may just have taken a while to settle in to the performance, but the opening Debussy Sonata did not come across particularly well. Piano and violin didn’t quite lock in together and the Debussy ‘wash’ of sound, akin to an impressionist watercolour, was not apparent – the tone was harsh and rhythms angular. It was a style of playing that fitted Schoenberg’s Phantasy much better.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Mar-2012 Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, Verizon Hall | Esa-Pekka Salonen with the Philadelphia Orchestra | Zerbinetta |
 When a guest conductor arrives for a few concerts with an orchestra, he or she doesn’t have very much time to shape his or her interpretation. On some occasions the orchestra successfully adopts the visitor’s style; on others they just play like they always do. In Esa-Pekka Salonen’s concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra last night, the program of Debussy, Bartók, and the Finnish conductor’s own Violin Concerto was more the maestro’s style (cool modernist) than the orchestra’s (rather conservative and Romantic). The playing, however, was mostly typically Philadelphia.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Mar-2012 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Command and Refinement: Leif Ove Andsnes at Queen Elizabeth Hall | Frances Wilson |
 The excellent International Piano Series at the Southbank Centre continued with a fine recital of music by Haydn, Bartók, Debussy and Chopin by acclaimed and very popular (judging by the full house) Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.
Read full review... | ||
| 11-Mar-2012 La Maison Symphonique de Montréal | A Compelling 20th-Century Program in Montréal | Andrew Crust |
 The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and Jean-Marie Zeitouni crafted an intriguing program tonight with orchestral music by four great masters of rhythm: Bartók, Ravel, Boulez and Stravinsky. The result of this brilliant selection of works was a concert as unique and colorful as the works it featured.
Read full review... | ||
| 28-Feb-2012 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Travels with a Piano: Peter Donohoe at Queen Elizabeth Hall | Frances Wilson |
 Elder statesman of British pianism and soloist of international renown, Peter Donohoe gave a richly varied and, at times, highly emotional recital as part of the Southbank Centre’s ongoing International Piano Series, featuring music by Debussy, Liszt, Brahms and Bartok.
Read full review... | ||
| 19-Feb-2012 Konzerthaus: Mozart Saal | The Grubinger piano and percussion ensemble keeps it in the family | Zwölftöner |
 Martin Grubinger may be regarded as one of the world’s most exciting percussion virtuosi, but for my money his greatest strengths are pianistic: the rich density of timbre he gets from his instruments (which are mainly the marimba and xylophone), the gift for turning an eloquent phrase, and the seamless legato that comes from sensitive touch and a finely-tuned ear for decay. His wife Ferzan and her twin sister Ferhan Önder share these qualities in their piano playing, turning graceful phrases while applying the minimum of weight.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Feb-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | A Night Off the Opera: Pappano Conducts the LSO | Helen Fraser |
 At first glance, Sir Antonio Pappano was not the obvious choice for a programme of twentieth-century orchestral works. The conductor is established as one of the leading lights of the operatic world, his tenure as Music Director of the Royal Opera House likely to go down as one of the great operatic partnerships of all time, but how would he fare in this tricky repertoire, with all attention focused on the orchestra?Read full review... | ||
| 9-Feb-2012 Bridgewater Hall | The Hallé and Sir Mark Elder: Beethoven 7 | Rohan Shotton |
 Mark Elder finished his part in the Hallé’s Beethoven cycle with a rambunctious performance of the seventh symphony, with works by Sibelius and Bartók adding to a dynamic evening of music.
Before conducting Sibelius’ tone poem The Bard, Elder paid tribute to the late Paavo Berglund, the great Finnish conductor and champion of all things Sibelian, who died last month.Read full review... | ||
| 3-Feb-2012 Église de Saanen, Saanen | Revelatory Bartók from Camerata Bern | David Karlin |
 If you go to enough concerts, it’s bound to happen to you every now and then: the programme includes a work that you weren’t particularly looking forward to, and the performers blow you away, utterly transforming your view of the piece. In this case, the performers were Camerata Bern and the work was Bartók’s Divertimento for strings.
Read full review... | ||
| 20-Dec-2011 Concertgebouw: Recital Hall | Chamber music by members of the Concertgebouworkest | Renée Reitsma, ypgtcm.blogspot.com |
.jpg) Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto à tre is a three-movement piece (but played without breaks) for clarinet, cello and violin. Although it was a very fluid piece, there were many different elements within the music. The violin often played a classical-sounding melody, whereas the rhythm, drive and repetition of the piece at times reminded me of the American minimalists. The second movement conjured up images of a vast, desolate Nordic landscape while still being very comforting listening. The third movement I considered the most exciting: at times it sounded like a happy but rather mad chase.Read full review... | ||
| 10-Nov-2011 Le Poisson Rouge | Takács Quartet Perform Dvorák and Bartók | Kay Kempin |
 Classical music is the last thing one would expect to find behind the historic Village gate at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Don’t let the venue fool you; (Le) Poisson Rouge regularly plays host to a myriad of performers. Thursday night, it was the Takács Quartet.
Comprised of Edward Dusinberre (violin), Karoly Schranz (violin), Geraldine Walther (viola) and András Fejér (cello), the Takács Quatret is a well-established group, having recently been awarded the 2011 Royal Philharmonic Society Award in Chamber Music and Song. Thursday night, Takács did not disappoint.
Read full review... | ||
| 9-Nov-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | Nielsen's flute concerto, a Miraculous Mandarin, and a Mermaid | Carla Finesilver, silverfin.wordpress.com |
 Carl Nielsen had an exceptional understanding of the nuances of woodwind instruments, and when playing the parts he wrote for flautists, the affection is almost palpable. Towards the end of his composing career, he thought of different orchestral instruments as having distinct personalities, and composed their interactions accordingly.Read full review... | ||
| 8-Nov-2011 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Illuminating Pianism: The Liszt Project 1- Pierre-Laurent Aimard at Queen Elizabeth Hall | Frances Wilson |
 French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard gave the first of two concerts at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall to celebrate Franz Liszt’s bicentenary, and to coincide with the release of his ambitious recording, The Liszt Project.
In an inventive and impeccably performed programme, Aimard placed works by Liszt alongside music by Bartok, contemporary composer Marco Stroppa, Ravel and Messiaen to demonstrate Liszt’s profound and lasting influence, and as a way of blurring the borders between one style and another. Connections were made not just musically, but also thematically and metaphorically in a spell-binding concert of intense concentration and illuminating pianism.
Read full review... | ||
