An animated performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto from Radulović along with a gripping account of Rachmaninov's First Symphony makes for a splendid night of Russian fire with the BSO.
Lalo's sunny slice of Seville formed the centrepiece of a programme by the BSO and James Gaffigan that completely lived up to its seductive “Exotic Spice” billing.
As this visiting orchestra from Saxony reached the closing stages of their 2 week UK tour they still had some terrific commitment and punch to their sound.
Rich gifts of from the distinctive OAE, with Vikoria Mullova adding austere authority to Brahms and Ádám Fischer bringing out all the colour in Dvořák's “New World” Symphony.
As part of their Autumn UK tour, Russia’s oldest symphony orchestra delivered Liadov, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, but failed to create a lasting impression.
Eastern European folk rhythms and the spirit of fin de siècle Russia resonate through Basingstoke as the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra plays Kodály, Rachmaninov and Dvořák.
Combining Steven Berkoff’s brutally in-yer-face libretto with the gutsy music of Mark-Anthony Turnage was bound to be an explosive mix. The result was Greek, Turnage’s first opera (or, more accurately, Singspiel), first performed in 1988 and now given an inspiring new airing from Music Theatre Wales. Berkoff’s text was adapted from his own play, based on the Oedipus myth.
“My Sixth seems to be yet another hard nut, one that our critics' feeble little teeth cannot crack”. It will “propound riddles the solution of which may be attempted only by a generation which has absorbed and truly digested my first five symphonies.”. So wrote Mahler in letters to the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Austrian writer and musicologist Richard Specht respectively.
In a musical tour around Great Britain, the dramatic focus was centred on Wales and Scotland, with James MacMillian’s Three Interludes from The Sacrifice: and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie opening and closing the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the Basingstoke Anvil.
Curiously, for a country that has created so much music, Italy has struggled to produce a world class symphony orchestra to match those from Berlin, Vienna, London and America. Partly due to the influence of the current director of music at London’s Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano, that has now changed.
Thus reads the dedication of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, written in 1935 to commemorate the short life of Manon, the 18-year old daughter of the famous architect Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus) and Gustav Mahler’s widow, the complex socialite, Alma Mahler. The apparently enchanting Manon (described as “an angelic gazelle from heaven”) died after suddenly contracting polio.
