Richard Bratby is the chief classical music critic of The Spectator
‘All fish in flood and fowl of flight/ Be mirthful now and make melody’ writes the poet William Dunbar in the verses that Sir Charles Hubert Parry set to music as Ode on the Nativity. In David Matthews’s new Ninth Symphony, one particular fowl does exactly that. The symphony’s central movement begins on strings: an
Apparently it’s called ‘expectation management’. Pollux, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, takes its name from Greek myth. But as Salonen explains in his programme note, there’s more: lots more. It’s intended to form a diptych with a second piece called (naturally enough) Castor. It’s also part-inspired by Rilke’s Sonnets to
The opening of Mark Simpson’s new Cello Concerto is pure Hollywood. A fanfare in the low brass, an upwards rush and suddenly the screen floods with lush orchestral sound — as confident in its onward sweep as Star Wars or ‘Tara’s Theme’. Waiting, poised, in the middle of it all was the soloist Leonard Elschenbroich,
It’s been a good couple of weeks for cuddly toys in opera. A big floppy Eeyore is the only comfort for 11-year-old Coraline at the darkest moment of Mark-Anthony Turnage and Rory Mullarkey’s new opera. The teenage Composer in Antony McDonald’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos has a Beanie Baby panda as a sort of
A spectre haunted the first weekend of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival: the spectre of Richard Wagner. Debussy’s relationship with Wagner began with infatuation, and ended (as so often) in open rebellion. The young decadent who declared Parsifal ‘one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of
Blue Gadoo is one of those cats whose face looks like it’s been bashed flat with a wok. He lives in New York, apparently, and his bulging eyes goggle out from Gerald Barry’s programme note for his new Organ Concerto. Check him out: the Guardian published the full note a day before the performance, which
‘Welcome to our hearts again, Iolanthe!’ sings the fairy chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan’s fantasy-satire, and during this exuberant new production by Cal McCrystal you could almost hear the assembled G&S fans sighing in agreement. Iolanthe is our trump card against the sceptics, and not merely because Gilbert’s digs at parliamentary politics are still so
Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting. Ulysses (Roderick Williams) and Penelope (Christine Rice) stand facing each other at last, arms outstretched. But Penelope is on terra firma. Ulysses stands on the revolving walkway that has served as the stage throughout most
Everyone knows — don’t they? — that the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is the UK’s youngest world-class symphony orchestra — an ensemble of musicians aged 18 and under that’s the equal of any professional band (and better than some). But it’s also the largest, and we don’t hear enough about the sheer sonic
Claude Debussy died on 25 March 1918 to the sound of explosions. Four days earlier, the Kaiser’s army had deployed its long-range Paris Gun, and as Debussy’s cancer entered its final hours, artillery shells were bursting in the streets around his home in Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne. This quiet modernist — who’d transformed music into an
To get a flavour of Joseph Marx’s An Autumn Symphony, picture the confectionery counter in a grand Viennese café. Beneath the glass lies sweetness beyond imagining: towers of sponge cake, billows of whipped cream, and icing that shines red and orange. You wander down the display: there are Sachertortes, petits fours, candied angelica and glacé
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Mariss Jansons Barbican NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover / Andrew Manze Symphony Hall At the end of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony Mariss Jansons asked the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to stand up, and they refused. That’s not something that occurs in every concert; in fact, you might never see it happen. But this
‘There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on,’ wrote the critic of the Boston Globe after the US première of Bernstein’s Third Symphony, Kaddish, in February 1964 — and looking at the forces arrayed at the Barbican, he had a point. In addition to the full LSO
Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune begins with a sigh: a long, languorous exhalation played on the lower notes of a solo flute. The flute’s usual brightness and brilliance is gone. It’s a dusky, breathy sound, made of half-shades and velvet: the musical embodiment of luxe, calme et volupté. And it’s completely impossible to imitate
Luigi Cherubini is the pantomime villain of French romantic music. As head of the Paris Conservatoire in the 1820s he was the embodiment of obsolescence: Berlioz’s Memoirs recount an occasion when some state functionary told the ageing master that he should really write an opera. ‘One can dimly imagine the indignant consternation of the author
Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti begins not with a prelude, but a jingle. In Matthew Eberhardt’s production a trio of session singers clusters around a studio microphone. A clarinet throws out a slinky riff, the ‘On Air’ light blinks on, and they’re off: a swinging hymn to postwar suburbia, in Andrews Sisters close-harmony. Then we
Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was a plant at Bielsko-Biala, and the car was widely driven throughout Poland in the 1970s, when you only had to wait a couple of years to buy one. It became an emblem of personal freedom,
‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic. We’ve just had the big reveal (Russell said it ‘out-Hollywoods Hollywood’) in which Mahler admits to his young wife Alma that she inspired the lyrical theme in the first movement of his Sixth Symphony. It’s
‘First performance: Vienna, October 3, 1880’ declares the programme for Opera della Luna’s new production of Johann Strauss’s The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief. ‘First British Performance: Wilton’s Music Hall, London, August 29, 2017’. They’re not joking: this really is the first full UK staging of the Waltz King’s single most successful (in his lifetime, anyway) operetta.
Schoenberg began Gurrelieder in 1900, but he didn’t hear it until 1913. By then, he’d moved on, and he ostentatiously refused to acknowledge the applause for what (as it turned out) would be the greatest public triumph of his career. Radical artist snubs ignorant masses: it’s a gesture that could stand for much of classical
