A twice graduate of the RWCMD (BMus & MMus), Philip developed a strong interest in both early and 20th century music, particularly the works of the Second Viennese School and the late William Alwyn. A pianist and ensemble musician, Philip plays with the TripTych Trio and has a particular interest in orchestral and chamber music.
As I had both hoped and expected, Widmann's Babylon Suite had an undercurrent of knowing wickedness and a sense of self-awareness that one would find in a Stravinsky ballet score.
With so much focus - understandably - on London's concerts during the Proms season, it is a delight to be able to listen to and attend various other related performances across the UK.
The most exciting of the works presented by Quatuor Tana was the première of Yann Robin's Second Quartet, Crescent Scratches. As explained by Robin, the quartet is founded on the idea of pulsating glissandi and 'scratching' as used on a DJ turntable.
Tonight, on Benjamin Britten’s birthday 100 years to the day, Llŷr Williams performed a selection of Britten’s piano music alongside works by Haydn, Bridge and Schubert, in a concert concluding the Gregynog Festival.
I have come to look forward to the variety of repertoire often presented by Mark Eager and the Welsh Sinfonia, often mixing more familiar works with other, less-prominent compositions. This evening’s short and simple concert offered a programme in this very vein: four 20th- and 21st-century composers with somewhat different yet complementary styles.
I find it difficult to remember the last time I attended a concert in which I was met with just about everything that I wanted to hear, settled alongside facets of performance that I hadn’t yet encountered. Perhaps tonight was, indeed, my first such experience.Thomas Søndergård’s rendition of Poulenc’s Gloria realised everything that I find I intuitively hope to hear from it.
The Mozartkirche, a grand Catholic church in Biberbach, provided a somewhat reverential setting for the sixth concert in the mozart@augsburg series. It was also a distinct contrast to the elaborate Small Golden Hall in which the previous evening’s concert, “Chamber Music Pearls”, was held.
In a similar vein to the previous evening’s rather German-orientated “Grosse Streichquartette” concert given by the Artemis Quartet, tonight’s mozart@augsburg concert contained Beethoven piano sonatas interspersed with recitations: a “Sea of Harmony”. It was also to be the last of the festival’s concerts that I was to experience this year.
For years now, Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony has been at the head of my bucket list of works to hear in concert – and this Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vänskä gave me the chance.
After spending a short time away on the Southern coast of France, it was welcoming to attend a concert drawn from both sides of the continent shortly after returning: a French composer, two English composers and a work of a Frenchman arranged by a contemporary English musician.
As a fan of contemporary music and, indeed, minimalism, I was disappointed to find the programme at Prom 50 underwhelming overall. This was not for lack of trying, however – I wanted to enjoy it. But after allowing the music time to sink in further and my thoughts to settle, my opinions only seemed to have become more resolute.The evening started promisingly.
Tonight’s Stockhausen Prom was in equal parts sonic experience and performance.In an introduction to a performance of Gesang der Jünglinge in 2001, Stockhausen proposed that “if you close your eyes every now and then, you might even see these angels”. In a concert performance this isn’t an empty suggestion; Gesang der Jünglinge is a truly acoustic experience.
On Wednesday evening the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Adrian Partington, presented a programme of choral music by the two musical friends Poulenc and Britten.
After hearing the Welsh Sinfonia’s last concert in January 2013, I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend their Gala Finale concert this month. This was particularly the case since it included a première of a new composition by Roxanna Panufnik, daughter of Andrzej Panufnik, whose Epitaph I heard finely performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in March.
“Three concertos and an epitaph” is how the Wales Millennium Centre summed up tonight’s concert. Not only did the selected programme focus almost exclusively on three composers’ essays in the concerto genre, but it also spanned a narrow period of time within the mid 20th-century: 22 years in total, or 38 if one includes Andrzej Panufnik’s Katyn Epitaph.
