Buscador de artículos | David Fay

David Fay was disappointed by Revolutionary Drawing Room's 25th anniversary concert, a performance of Haydn's Seven Last Words at St George's, Hanover Square which lacked emotional engagement.

John Woolrich's Songbook project provided the vocal material on show at the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group recital at Wigmore Hall, featuring sopranos Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski.

The Berlin Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle embodied engagement with the music of two contrasting Sibelius symphonies, and were joined by Leonadis Kavakos for the same composer's shimmering Violin Concerto.

Judith Weir's music didn't have the pride of place it deserved at this miscellaneous collection of music from past and present Masters of the Queen's Music, presented by the Park Lane Group at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. 

There was an inundation of the sound of John Tavener's Flood of Beauty at the Barbican on Sunday, with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Charles Dutoit and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra journey on a Roman holiday, taking in the pines, fountains and festivals of the Eternal City. 

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in a late night performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the BBC Proms.

The Tallis Scholars and the Heath Quartet perform the music of John Tavener at the Royal Albert Hall, on the 100th anniversary of the start of Britain's involvement in the First World War.

David Fay reviews Evgeny Kissin playing Schubert and Scriabin at the Barbican Hall, London.

The pure joy that Mozart’s music can bring was emphasized in the Zurich Chamber Orchestra's concert at Cadogan Hall in London, featuring pianist Jonathan Biss and conducted by Sir Roger Norrington.

Sunshine bursts forth as Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra, featuring pianist Nikolai Lugansky, in a Sunday matinée concert of Beethoven and Mendelssohn at the Southbank Centre.

The LSO, under Daniel Harding, gives the world première of Huw Watkins’ impressive Flute Concerto, before offering a spectacular performance of Mahler’s Symphony no.1.

Angela Hewitt, Julia Schroder and Andrea Oliva play J.S. Bach at Wigmore Hall in London, finishing with The Musical Offering.

Andreas Scholl, Klara Ek and the Academy of Ancient music perform Vivldi, Pergolesi and Wassenaer at the Barbican. All the musicians worked exceptionally well as part of the collective, turning the programme into a real delicacy.

Both Andris Nelsons and the Philharmonia Orchestra showed total commitment to and immersion in Brahms' music in this instalment in Nelsons' cycle with the orchestra. They were joined by Hélène Grimauld for the Second Piano Concerto, before the Fourth Symphony.

Mitsuko Uchida and players from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra played Berg, Schubert and Messiaen at Wigmore Hall, creating moments of sheer beauty.

The Hilliard Ensemble celebrated their fortieth birthday at the Spitalfields Music Winter Festival, at St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch.

Read our review of Luc Bondy's production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of James Levine's production of Puccini­'s Manon Lescaut in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York

Read our review of David McVicar's production of Verdi's Il Trovatore in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Christoph von Dohnányi was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and to celebrate he led some of the Academy's students in a performance of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony.

No exploration of the relationship between spirituality and 20th-century music can delve to any sorts of depth without discovering the figure of Olivier Messiaen, the religiously-influenced composer par excellence in a century characterised by the emancipation of art from religion.

Winter has struck Bristol pre-emptively this year, and finding a nice, warm place to hide on a Sunday morning is a good way to lessen the hold of its icy clutches.

Embarrassing puns aside, the music of Arvo Pärt is hardly the staple fare of late-night revellers on Bristol’s Park Street, especially on a Friday. Tucked just around the corner, though, St George’s was celebrating the end of the long summer drought of live classical music courtesy of the Choir of Royal Holloway – fresh from their tour of the Balkan states – and the Bristol Ensemble.

Although it was probably arranged via a series of emails between managers, the audience at Prom 41 could have been forgiven for thinking that this was a match made in heaven.

If I had to come up with a unifying theme for the BBC Singers’ Proms Chamber Music concert at Cadogan Hall, it would be “mystery”. Sir Harrison Birtwistle linked moths with mysteriousness in his mid-concert interview prior to the UK première of The Moth Requiem. Gustav Holst explored the mystery expressed in the ancient Rig Veda texts in his Choral Hymns of the Rig Veda.

Gustav Holst certainly wouldn’t be classed by anyone in the “one-hit wonder” brigade, but it is quite rare to find his name appearing on concert programmes next to anything but those two words: The Planets.

When most of us feel like we’re getting a little stale with a piece of work we’re doing – when the thoughts, words or ideas are drying up – we stop for a coffee, stretch our legs, or do a bit of internet browsing. When Richard Wagner realised inspiration was running low for Siegfried, he decided to have a break from it too.

The sun is out and the musical migration has begun. Many metropolis music venues decide practically to shut up shop for the summer, and the concert junkie needs to uproot and search out top classical music at one of the summer festivals that spring up seasonally.

Amidst all the hustle and bustle, the humming and buzzing of post-work Friday-night drinkers lining the sun-kissed streets of Spitalfields, who’d have thought that in the church at the very heart of that lively London area would be a man, standing alone, singing music written 800 years ago? Music from another human-inhabited world, so alien to our modern-day, Commercial Street lives, and yet still

Everyone tells me that Russians play Russian music better than anyone else, but no-one seems to be able to put their fingers on the mysterious quality of Russianness Russians are meant to produce when playing Russian.

Johannes Brahms and his music have a reputation for being somewhat meaty, and so an English Sunday afternoon seems an appropriate time to hear two of his chamber works side by side.

In the week when Culture Secretary Maria Miller told arts organisations across the UK to show her the money, it seems inappropriate to begin this review by commenting on the length of concert intervals – they are, after all, vital for venues to make a few pounds selling drinks to a culture-thirsty clientele.

I doubt many of us have been to the seaside recently. Even if Bristolians had braved the cold and wet and wind, I’m sure that the mudflats of Brean or the arcades of Weston-super-Mare were a far cry from the visions of that mysterious body of saltwater conjured up by the Enigma Orchestra in their second ever concert at St George’s.

It can’t be often that one of the world’s pre-eminent Bach scholar-interpreters teams up with one of the world’s most famous period instrument ensembles to give a concert dedicated to one of the world’s most celebrated composers in one of the world’s most renowned acoustics.

I’ve had the great privilege and even greater joy over the last couple of months to have been totally immersed in Bach: I’ve been researching him, and particularly his Passions, since Christmas.

Choral concerts often have programmes that read like compilation CDs. I don’t mean this negatively: there are countless reasons why a greater number of contrasting pieces is required – timbral, textual, temporal, contextual, historical, and so on.

According to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, “Not all orchestras are the same”. I’m not sure who doubts this rather obvious statement; but I’m certain I’m not alone in thinking the OAE to be a unique ensemble, and not just for the eccentricity of its name.

St George’s Bristol is an extraordinary venue. Renowned for its unbeatable acoustic amongst performers and listeners alike, there is something unique about it that cannot be attributed to its sonic qualities alone.

Aren’t nicknames interesting! I’m sure there’ll have been hundreds of studies into the development, designation, and deployment of nicknames and the historical and sociological conclusions we can draw from the Daves, D-Diddies and Dangerous Dans alike. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the nickname formed the basis of an entire field of academic enquiry.

Classical music is not cool. Most people who’ve come through secondary school with a love for it are well aware of that, having been frequently reminded of it by their peers. As a result of this, most of us probably couldn’t care less, though I’m sure we all question, when beholding some particularly awesome musical event, the premises on which this schoolyard assumption is based.

The more you read about music, the more you notice the word “authenticity” cropping up annoyingly frequently. The great raging musical arguments of the late 20th century still burn; performers, listeners, even composers find themselves having to take up quasi-moralistic stances on gut strings, vibrato, and whether trills should begin on the upper or lower note.

Good programming makes for a good concert. Chosen works must fit well together, providing enough musical contrast to keep things interesting, but they must not be so different as to jar listeners with alien soundworlds. All too often, organisers whip up concerts in which any link between pieces are entirely superficial and completely amusical.

If your ears happen to frequent the frequencies of the BBC’s classical music radio station, it’s highly possible that you’ll have been swamped by piano music this monsoon season. Piano notes have poured down upon us, flooding the airwaves with this extraordinary instrument’s capacity to evoke everything from orchestras to ocarinas, from tempestuousness to tranquillity, from Moonlight to Raindrops.

Few live events could offer a more intense, visceral, grotesque experience than witnessing a performance of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome translated and adapted for the opera stage by Hermann Lachmann and set to music by Richard Strauss.

Another lazy Sunday morning means another quality chamber concert for the Wigmore Hall cognoscenti. This week, their complimentary sherry was served with a cocktail of violin and piano duets, mixing the contrasting flavours of Pärt, Schubert and Richard Strauss, courtesy of child-prodigy-turned-twentysomething virtuoso Chloë Hanslip and established pianist Charles Owen.

The prospect of writing about one of the world’s greatest orchestras, conducted by one of the world’s greatest conductors, playing one of the world’s most revolutionary pieces of music left me excited, if not a little daunted.

‘Fêtes Galantes’ is one of those glorious French phrases that sounds so wonderful but is nigh on impossible to translate. Rather than having any concrete meaning, it evokes Watteau-esque imagery of woodland gatherings, where eighteenth-century aristocrats amuse themselves by flirting, dancing and making music.

Every now and then I like to experiment. Reviewing a concert in which I know none of the music can be frightening, but also exciting and – always – surprising. Thus I was slightly apprehensive but wholly enthusiastic about attending this LSO concert featuring works unknown to me by Bartók and Szymanowski.

There are some musical compositions that have always been a bit of a gamble, for composers, performers and even listeners. They might be exceptionally difficult, require extraordinary forces, or show such originality as to be perpetually startling.