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Month: August 2016

Prom 46, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016August 27, 2016 by Michael Church
Ilan Volkov has grown steadily in stature as a conductor during his years in Scotland, but his direction of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Gerard Grisey’s Dérives was simply masterly. ‘Sp... Read More

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Glyndebourne, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016June 7, 2018 by Michael Church
Peter Hall’s theatrical and operatic legacy is vast, but one of the productions at the heart of it is his A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which opened to universal plaudits in 1981. He and his creative... Read More

Brahms at Verbier: notes for a Deutsche Grammophon CD

Posted on August 24, 2016August 24, 2016 by Michael Church
Fresh from his exertions with his Requiem, Brahms nonchalantly dismissed his first set of Liebeslieder-Waltzer in a letter to his publisher as ‘trifles’, though he was also pretty confident of the... Read More

Youth orchestras in the Middle East, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016August 26, 2016 by Michael Church
Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO), created in 1999, is by no means the only youth orchestra to have emerged from the cauldron of the Middle East. Four years later in Ramallah, t... Read More

Stephen Hough, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016August 24, 2016 by Michael Church
Trailing acclaimed recordings, and laden with awards including a $500,000 MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, 54-year-old Stephen Hough is the undisputed top dog among British concert pianists. He is even m... Read More

The music of Thomas Larcher, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016August 28, 2016 by Michael Church
A quicksilver art If the music of Thomas Larcher reflects conflicting impulses at a very deep level, it also reflects the triumphant resolution of those conflicts.  He’s a virtuoso concert pianist ... Read More

Review of ‘Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar’, Oliver Hilmes, Yale

Posted on August 24, 2016August 24, 2016 by Michael Church
Sardonically christened ‘Lisztomania’ by the German poet Heinrich Heine, an infectious disease swept through musical Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Women were its main victims, with fetishi... Read More

Recital and concerto roundup, International Piano Magazine, July 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016August 24, 2016 by Michael Church
Barbican: Murray Perahia Jun 20 Royal Festival Hall: Richard Goode May 25 Wigmore Hall: Till Fellner May 30; Yevgeny Sudbin June 16; St James’s Church, Piccadilly: June 17   Murray Perahia is o... Read More

Ermonela Jaho, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016June 7, 2018 by Michael Church
When dictators stifle dissent, the art which survives is music, and it’s no surprise that the soprano recently taking London’s Royal Opera House by storm should have been born and bred in Enver Ho... Read More

‘Nothing’, Glyndebourne, 2016

Posted on August 24, 2016June 8, 2018 by Michael Church
A youth opera about adolescent alienation? We’ve watched too many of them founder in their own plodding worthiness, and the heart sank at the prospect of yet another, particularly one travelling und... Read More

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