Sam Wigglesworth contributed reviews to Bachtrack from 2012 to 2014. He studied at King's College London and, after a brief period producing concerts at St John's Smith Square, began working at Faber Music in 2014. He was Artistic Director of the Principal Sound Festival in 2016 and 2018.
Before the beginning of this new version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute from Simon McBurney, Complicite and English National Opera, one may wonder, looking at the stage, why it was recently hailed as the company’s most technically advanced creation to date: an austere, no-frills set consisting of a single suspended rectangular slab and a raised orchestra pit both reflect this production’s refreshing
For anyone lucky enough to have witnessed the last Barbican residency from Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the striking, thoughtful and vivid accounts of Brahms they gave here should not be a surprise. In Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 2, however, orchestra outdid soloist.
One notable absentee from the Southbank Centre’s celebration of the post-war avant garde earlier this month was Jean Barraqué, a composer whose tiny catalogue of works, whilst not as well known as those of his contemporaries, is a vivid reminder of just how diverse the period was stylistically.
There are few works in the classical repertoire as expansive as Mozart’s Quintet in C major, K515 – the opening Allegro is actually longer than any movement of its kind before Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony whilst its spacious character seems to prefigure Schubert.
After the epic grandeur, sweep and immersive quality of Gesang der Jünglinge at this summer’s Proms, this performance as part of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival had a lot to live up to. In many ways, however, this far less ostentatious outing overseen by Sound Intermedia got even closer to the work’s disturbing essence.
Two specially assembled suites from operas by Rameau opened this concert from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and William Christie at the Royal Festival Hall.
In one of several (pretty outrageous) notes to conductors in the score of his Roméo et Juliette, Berlioz states that “the average listener has no imagination” and, as a result of this, the sixth movement of the work should be cut in 99 per cent of performances.
There are few London venues that manage to combine a real sense of intimacy with an international roster of artists quite as well as Julius Drake’s concert series at Middle Temple Hall. In this recital he was joined by German soprano Annette Dasch for a programme that began with a complete performance of Schumann’s Kerner Lieder.
How radical can an exposition repeat be? Well, in the hands of Schubert, very radical indeed, it turns out. The sheer scale of the Molto moderato which opens his final piano sonata means that by the time the opening material returns a huge swathe of time has passed, so much so that each re-encountered phrase is seen in the light of all that happened in the mean time.
Shortly after a disguised Wotan stepped onto the stage in the third instalment of Barenboim’s Proms Ring, across London another of German music’s great wanderers put in an appearance. It may have been a warm July evening outside, but from the first notes of this compelling Winterreise from James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook the temperature in Wigmore Hall seemed to plummet well below zero.
Music We’d Like to Hear, an annual series of concerts curated by the composers Markus Trunk, John Lely and Tim Parkinson, has reached its ninth year of sharing an eclectic, often esoteric selection of experimental music with its small but loyal following.
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.
Although this was ostensibly a recital featuring the music of two composers, a third, much less venerable one, also managed to leave his mark on proceedings. The figure in question is Carl Czerny, the one-time pupil of Beethoven’s whose banal piano studies proved to be the springboard for the first of Claude Debussy’s own, far more inventive forays into the genre.
Entitled “Passion and Resurrection”, this exquisite concert from Stile Antico unfolded as an exploration of music written in response to Holy Week.One of the group’s most striking characteristics is their decision to work without a conductor, a move which can at times produce chamber music of the highest quality.
Delius is a composer who is often misunderstood, the English pastoralism of works like On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring hardly representative of either his cosmopolitan life or the breadth of his output.
This new production of Mozart’s final, and often overlooked, opera from John Fulljames and Opera North is neither a period piece nor a straightforward translation into our own time. Instead, it inhabits it own dark and austere world created by set designer Conor Murphy and Finn Ross, whose stylish abstract projections incorporate elements of government buildings both ancient and modern.
Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.
By adding Schubert’s Winterresie to her repertoire Alice Coote joins a long tradition of female interpreters including the likes of Christine Schäfer and her own mentor Brigitte Fassbaender. In this performance of Schubert’s great song cycle, however, it was the piano playing of Julius Drake, rather than Coote’s singing, which penetrated to the heart of the work.
