Boulezian

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 27 January 2012

2012-01-28T16:25:00.000Z

Royal Opera House Ferrando – Charles Castronovo Guglielmo – Nikolay Borchev Don Alfonso – Sir Thomas Allen Fiordiligi – Malin Byström Dorabella – Michèle Losier Despina – Rosemary Joshua Jonathan Miller (director) Harry Fehr (revival director) Jonathan Miller, Tim Blazdell, Andrew Jameson, Colin Maxwell, Catherine Smith, and Anthony Waterman (set designs) Jonathan Miller and John Charlton (

For Mozart's birthday

2012-01-27T16:29:00.001Z

Philharmonia/Salonen - Beethoven and Dallapiccola, Il prigioniero, 26 January 2012

2012-01-26T23:03:00.000Z

Royal Festival Hall Beethoven – Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67 Dallapiccola – Il prigioniero The Prisoner – Lauri Vasar The Mother – Paoletta Marrocu Gaoler/Grand Inquisitor – Peter Hoare First Priest – Brian Galliford Second Priest, Fra Redemptor – Francisco Javier Borda David Edwards (stage director) David Holmes (lighting) Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver) Philharmonia

Furtwängler's Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, 1943

2012-01-25T16:54:00.000Z

Today marks Wilhelm Furtwängler's one hundred-and-twenty-sixth birthday. Who knows whether Mahler or Wagner were 'greater' conductors? Here is unquestionably the greatest of whom we have recorded evidence, offering a flickering candle of hope during Germany's darkest night of the soul. 'Shattering' does not even come close to describing so magisterial a rebuke to Toscanini-like bandmasters and

R.I.P. Rita Gorr, 1926-2012

2012-01-23T16:40:00.001Z

Belcea Quartet - Beethoven, 21 January 2012

2012-01-22T01:22:00.001Z

Wigmore Hall String Quartet no.2 in G major, op.18 no.2 String Quartet no.8 in E minor, op.59 no.2, ‘Razumovsky’ String Quartet no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.131 Corina Belcea-Fisher, Axel Schacher (violins) Krzysztof Chorzelski (viola) Antoine Lederlin (cello) I have almost nothing but praise for this concert, but perhaps no praise would be higher than to say that these performances from the

Barbican Centre 2012-13 season announced

2012-01-18T12:35:00.002Z

It took me a while to find the page from which one could explore further than a few selected highlights. To save you the trouble, click here. The LSO's plethora of conductors' anniversaries ought to offer something for everyone.

Müller-Brachmann/Heilmann - Heine settings by Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann, 16 January 2012

2012-01-16T18:17:00.000Z

Wigmore Hall Schubert – Schwanengesang, D 957: songs by Heine Brahms – Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, op.96 no.1 Es schauen die Blumen, op.96 no.3 Meerfahrt, op.96 no.4 Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze, op.71 no.1 Schumann – Liederkreis, op.24 Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone) Hendrik Heilmann (piano) Having only given a cursory glance at the programme beforehand, it was a

A new Brahms piano piece to be performed by András Schiff

2012-01-15T19:59:00.000Z

A Brahms album leaf (Albumblatt) discovered by Christopher Hogwood when looking through a music collection in the USA, is to be given its first performance on BBC Radio 3 by András Schiff. Both Schiff and Hogwood will be interviewed for the 21 January broadcast of Music Matters (12.15 p.m.). I suspect - though who knows? - that the piece is unlikely to prove a lost masterwork, coming as it does

Ishizaka/LPO/Vedernikov - Prokofiev, 13 January 2012

2012-01-13T22:44:00.000Z

Royal Festival Hall Lieutenant Kijé: Suite Cello Concerto in E minor, op.58 Symphony no.7 in C-sharp minor, op.131 Danjulo Ishizaka (cello) London Philharmonic Orchestra Alexander Vedernikov (conductor) ‘Prokofiev: Man of the People?’ asks the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Prokofiev festival, curated by Vladimir Jurowski. For whatever reason – lack of availability, or professional generosity

What is so difficult to understand?

2012-01-11T16:35:00.003Z

Many readers will doubtless already have heard about the latest mobile telephone incident at a concert: a New York Philharmonic performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony - the Adagio, yes the Adagio! - eventually brought to a halt by a member of the audience who would not answer or stop the infernal noise. (Unpredictable Inevitability was my original source; here is a fuller account from an

Thomas Quasthoff retires...

2012-01-11T13:31:00.001Z

... as noted by the excellent Von heute auf morgen blog: click here. The last time I heard him was in a Berlin Winterreise with Daniel Barenboim (review here) in 2009.

Richter/Prégardien/Drake - Wolf, 10 January 2012

2012-01-11T00:48:00.002Z

Wigmore Hall Mörike-Lieder - Der Knabe und das Immlein - Nixe Binsefuss - Elfenlied - Begegnung - Der Gärtner - An die Geliebte - Der Feuerreiter Goethe-Lieder - Ganymed - Die Spröde - Die Bekehrte - Gleich und gleich - Ritter Kurts Brautfahrt - Der neue Amadis - Genialisch Treiben - St Nepomuks Vorabend Mörike, Geistliche Lieder - Neue Liebe - Schlafendes Jesuskind - Karwoche - Wo find

Sacconi Quartet - Haydn, Bartók, and Schubert, 8 January 2012

2012-01-09T12:34:00.000Z

Hall One, Kings Place Haydn – String Quartet in G major, op.77 no.1 Bartók – String Quartet no.3 Schubert – String Quartet in D minor, D810, ‘Death and the Maiden’ Ben Hancox, Hannah Dawson (violins) Robin Ashwell (viola) Cara Berridge (cello) Founded at the Royal College of Music in 2001, the Sacconi Quartet here celebrated its tenth anniversary: astonishing to register, given how youthful

Christian Blackshaw - Mozart, 6 January 2011

2012-01-06T23:57:00.001Z

Wigmore Hall Piano Sonata no.1 in C major, KV 279/189d Piano Sonata no.2 in F major, KV 280/189e Piano Sonata no.8 in D major, KV 311/284c Piano Sonata no.17 in B-flat major, KV 570 Piano Sonata no.9 in A minor, KV 310/300d Twelfth Night last year brought the opening concert of Kings Place’s year-long Mozart Unwrapped series. This year saw the first in a series of four Wigmore Hall recitals,

Wishing Maurizio Pollini a very happy 70th birthday

2012-01-05T11:11:00.000Z

To read about an unforgettable series of five concerts last year, ranging from Bach to Boulez and Stockhausen, click here. And for a more or less contemporaneous (to the Lucerne recording) performance of the Appassionata and three other Beethoven sonatas, click here.

More Gabrieli: Canzon septimi toni a 8

2012-01-03T19:13:00.002Z

Also from the 1597 collection Sacrae symphoniae. Boston Brass performs. Gabrieli on this occasion employs the polychoral style for purely instrumental music:

Giovanni Gabrieli (?1554-7 - 1612)

2012-01-01T17:32:00.000Z

The four-hundredth anniversary of Gabrieli's death will fall on 12 August of this year. Let us hope - in vain, I fear - that a year neither blessed nor cursed by a host of auspicious anniversaries will bring a good number of performances. The motet In ecclesiis has a good claim to be Gabrieli's most celebrated composition; at any rate, it offers a fine introduction to or reminder of his

Happy New Year and Happy Anniversary to Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

2012-01-01T12:29:00.000Z

Debussy will be 150 this year. Little of his music qualifies as obscure; his cause hardly needs pleading as did Liszt's in 2011 - and 2012. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is well-nigh universally accepted, however worthy the other claimants and however many questions this phrase might beg, as the first work of 'modern music'. Yet, worship though we might at the ever-ambiguous shrine of

Webern: Dormi, Jesu!

2011-12-30T21:02:00.000Z

The second of Webern's Five Canons, op.16: This lullaby text, from a sixteenth-century engraving by Hieronymus Wierix, was copied by Coleridge during his visit to Germany with Wordsworth and published two years later, in 1801. Coleridge would publish an English translation, also below, in 1810. Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet quae tam dulcem somnum videt, dormi, Jesu! blandule! Si non dormis, Mater

Christmas Music from Liszt and Schoenberg

2011-12-29T21:11:00.001Z

We rightly tend to think of choral music at Christmas time, but there are instrumental gems, often little known, to be heard too. In a late studio recording, Vladimir Horowitz plays 'Ehemals' from Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum: And here is Schoenberg's adorable Weihnachtsmusik, from the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna. When I hear it, I fancy that it tells us as much about the composer as the

At the End of (another) Mahler Year...

2011-12-28T17:36:00.003Z

... I find myself on a reasonably lengthy railway journey. Having foolishly packed books and my iPod in an inaccesible suitcase, more or less the only amusement - relatively speaking - available is my laptop. Or, of course, whatever I still can muster in my head. Any regular readers may recall a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this year's - and last year's - Mahler anniversaries. I shall not

OSJ/Lubbock - Handel, Messiah, 22 December 2011

2011-12-23T11:24:00.000Z

Hall One, Kings Place Hannah Davey (soprano) Roderick Morris (counter-tenor) John Pierce (tenor) David Pike (baritone) OSJ Voices (chorus master: Jeremy Jackman) Orchestra of St John’s John Lubbock (conductor) This was a delight: very much a tonic to December blues. Time was when Hall One of Kings Place would have been considered risibly small for a performance of the Messiah – though time was

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Royal Opera, 19 December 2011

2011-12-20T10:20:00.003Z

Pogner (Sir John Tomlinson) Images: Clive Barda/Royal Opera Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch Walther von Stolzing – Simon O’Neill Eva – Emma Bell Sixtus Beckmesser – Peter Coleman-Wright Veit Pogner – Sir John Tomlinson David – Toby Spence Magdalene – Heather Shipp Kunz Vogelsang – Colin Judson Konrad Nachtigall – Nicholas Folwell Fritz Kothner –

Performances of the Year, 2011

2011-12-18T21:24:00.002Z

If fate be tempted by the presentation of such a reckoning prior to the year's end, all the better: I should be delighted, verging upon astonished, if another performance this year came close to those below. The past couple of years, I have presented a list of twelve: an arbitrary number, of course, but akin to one per month, which did not seem unreasonable. This year, I have decided, in