| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 28-Apr-2013 The Royal Conservatory of Music, TELUS Centre, Koerner Hall | All the right decisions in the Swedish Chamber Orchestra's Beethoven concert in Toronto | Stanley Fefferman |
 Thomas Dausgaard conducts with his body. A shift in his posture, without engaging hands or arms, is enough indication for his Swedish Chamber Orchestra to execute subtly graduated dynamic shifts. And perhaps it was the sensitive acoustics of Koerner Hall, but I don’t recall having heard a finer separation of sonic textures and registers than those Dausgaard elicited from the dialogue of self and soul in Beethoven’s Coriolan overture.Read full review... | ||
| 1-Mar-2013 Usher Hall | Slobodeniouk and Bavouzet perform Beethoven with the RSNO | Jeremy Morris |
 There is nothing quite like an all-Beethoven programme for filling a large concert hall. Last night’s offering from the RSNO in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall was ample proof of this, with hardly a spare seat anywhere in the house. Given that the music was already so familiar, is there any other factor that might lend additional appeal?Read full review... | ||
| 5-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Turnage, Harding and Hardenberger with the London Symphony Orchestra | Paul Kilbey |
 Tuesday evening’s concert was technically the start of a short residency for Mark-Anthony Turnage with the London Symphony Orchestra, but a smouldering performance on the podium from Daniel Harding came close to drawing attention away from the featured composer. A curious mixture of Sibelius, Turnage and Beethoven – a combination of composers repeated in Thursday’s concert – served primarily to demonstrate Harding’s versatility in conducting, as well as the strength of his relationship with the LSO.
Read full review... | ||
| 31-Jan-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | What a difference a day makes: Barenboim and WEDO continue at Carnegie | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 “Daniel Barenboim can be a frustrating... conductor”, I wrote after the first concert in this series of four, in which he and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra are presenting all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies. As if to prove the point, to follow that stunning concert of First, Eighth and Fifth, these forces delivered a maddeningly inconsistent Fourth and a far loftier but hardly flawless Eroica.Read full review... | ||
| 13-Dec-2012 Birmingham Symphony Hall | CBSO and Andris Nelsons: Beethoven 3 and Triple Concerto | Rohan Shotton |
 Andris Nelsons marked the second instalment in the Birmingham Beethoven cycle with two works of the earliest years of the 19th century, featuring a solid account of the Eroica and a superb performance of the Triple Concerto.
Read full review... | ||
| 24-Oct-2012 Bridgewater Hall | The Hallé and Markus Stenz: Dvořák and Beethoven | Rohan Shotton |
 Markus Stenz conducted a lean and crisp performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony which remained unsentimental and lively throughout, prefaced by a nostalgically sunny Dvořák Cello Concerto with soloist Miklós Perényi.
Read full review... | ||
| 5-Oct-2012 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Andsnes joins Dudamel and the LA Phil in Beethoven | Ted Ayala |
 Long ago in my former life as a teenage record store clerk, I recall a customer who came into the store one chilly, autumn evening. A ruddy-faced man in his 50s wearing a beige cashmere coat approached the counter with a bundle of box sets in his arms; his face nearly disappearing between his scarf and his wool hat, with only the tips of his black, horn-rimmed glasses seemingly visible amidst the swirl of plaid.Read full review... | ||
| 21-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 10: Barenboim, Beethoven and Boulez, part two | Rohan Shotton |
 Programming works by Pierre Boulez alongside a high-profile Beethoven symphony cycle is an easy way to give exposure to the strikingly modern works of the Frenchman, but on seeing a substantial chunk of the audience disappear for an early drink before tonight's Boulez, I wondered if the Beethoven was perhaps too reliable a foil, leaving people little incentive to stay. This was a great pity, as Dialogue de l'ombre double created an amazing atmosphere in the hall and was an excellent inclusion in the programme.
Read full review... | ||
| 23-Jun-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in London | Rohan Shotton |
 Three separate standing ovations answered the first concert of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra's London residency, in which they played Beethoven and Britten with all of their trademark joie de vivre and panache. There was more, though; they played at times with a remarkable delicacy considering their uncommonly large forces, and the Britten in particular showed the individual quality of various players.
Read full review... | ||
| 21-Jun-2012 Old Schools Site | El Sistema demonstrated in Stirling | David Smythe |
 Can a concert have ever been so eagerly anticipated?
In 2006 Richard Holloway, then chair of the Scottish Arts Council, went on a fact-finding visit to Venezuela to look at El Sistema, where intensive classical music tuition in schools and the formation of orchestras has developed a successful track record of transforming attitudes in desperately poor and violent communities. The El Sistema model now helps thousands of children round the world. Returning to Edinburgh, convinced that Scotland must be involved, he was the key to setting up the Sistema Scotland charity in the Raploch housing estate in Stirling. Raploch was chosen not only because it was an area which would benefit, but also because it has a clear identity, an enthusiastic community and new facilities in a Community Campus allowing access for all the children.
Read full review... | ||
| 15-Mar-2012 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | David Zinman's Beethoven Festival in New York Ends with a Solid Eroica | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 There is, nowadays, no one way to play a Beethoven symphony – if indeed there ever was. Just as we today are exposed to the myriad methods of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Christian Thielemann, Bernard Haitink, and Osmo Vänskä, the supposedly bad old days of the 1950s found space for the very different talents of Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, and Hermann Scherchen to rub shoulders.Read full review... | ||
| 9-Dec-2011 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | An heroic evening from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra | Oliver Brett |
| 'Hero / Antihero' was how the Sydney Symphony Orchestra entitled their latest musical offering at Sydney Opera House. The title, of course, was referring to the anti-hero in Tchaikovsky's Voyevoda and the musical hero of Beethoven in his Eroica Symphony, which needs no introduction. However, 'Hero' might also have referred to solo cellist Alisa Weilerstein and guest conductor Osmo Vänskä. I would challenge anyone who claims to have seen a more thrilling display of cello virtuosity than that displayed by Weilsterstein in Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto. Read full review... | ||
| 5-Nov-2011 Bridgewater Hall | The Hallé and Sir Mark Elder: Beethoven 3 | Rohan Shotton |
 John Adams’s Harmonium accompanied the third instalment in the Hallé Beethoven cycle to form an exciting programme of music united by being very radical in its time.
Read full review... | ||
| 12-Oct-2011 Cadogan Hall | Shunské Sato and the Academy of Ancient Music serve a dazzling Paganini | David Karlin |
 We know what to expect from a virtuoso showpiece like Paganini's second Violin Concerto: a mighty contest between man and music, for us to be on the edge of our seats marvelling at how the violinist dazzles us with notes on the edge of possibility and grand gestures, with a mild frisson of "will he really manage it?"
Read full review... | ||
| 27-Aug-2011 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 57: Perfect Pires, baffling Beethoven | Tom Hancox |
 Nothing quite made sense in this programme, but the confusion was impressive nonetheless. The opening, the UK première of Anders Hillborg's 'Cold Heat', was a prime example of post-minimalism: an eclectic assortment of styles, juxtaposed with consideration, but without much sense of unity for the work itself. The commission had come from David Zinman for a piece 'with NO slow music whatsoever', and Hillborg complied – on the whole.Read full review... | ||
| 22-May-2011 Sage: Hall One | Heroic Beethoven and elegant Vivaldi | Jane Shuttleworth |
 I have to start with a confession: I’ve always been very lazy about making the effort to listen to Beethoven symphonies. When tonight’s Northern Sinfonia concert with Heinrich Schiff was announced, the attraction for me was always the Shostakovich cello concerto that was originally programmed. However, due to a shoulder problem, Heinrich Schiff was unable to perform the physically demanding Shostakovich work, and substituted three Vivaldi cello concerti instead, which I was also really looking forward to, for entirely different reasons.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2011 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | New York Philharmonic Executes Bartók and Beethoven with Clever Ferocity | Kay Kempin |
 Combining Bartók’s second Violin Concerto with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was a bold move for Alan Gilbert. Bartók’s music is rough around the edges, abrasive and severe but also tepid in parts. Beethoven, on the other hand, is wild and bombastic; The Eroica Symphony is a larger than life work. Performing the two pieces in a single evening was ambitious, but proved triumphant.
Read full review... | ||
| 29-Apr-2011 Barbican Centre: Hall | An Heroic Effort | Helen Fraser |
 Perhaps visions of the royal princes in battle dress influenced last night’s programme. Or perhaps it was merely felt that Beethoven’s Eroica symphony requires a suitably epic companion. Either way, the result was a rare performance of Britten’s enormous Battle of Heroes, written to honour the members of the International Brigade who died in the Spanish Civil war. Forming the filling of this heroic sandwich was the UK premiere of James Clarke’s Untitled No.2 for solo piano and orchestra, which if not heroic, was certainly daring in its composition.
Read full review... | ||
| 11-Mar-2011 Anvil, Basingstoke | To the Memory of an Angel | Andrew Benson-Wilson |
.jpg) Thus reads the dedication of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, written in 1935 to commemorate the short life of Manon, the 18-year old daughter of the famous architect Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus) and Gustav Mahler’s widow, the complex socialite, Alma Mahler. The apparently enchanting Manon (described as “an angelic gazelle from heaven”) died after suddenly contracting polio. This clearly affected Berg deeply, as evidenced by the outpouring of emotion is the Violin Concerto.Read full review... | ||
