Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the LPO offer an eclectic and unusual mix of works which, despite commendable playing, never quite added up to a satisfying whole.
Two musicians, pianist and cellist, entered on stage and started playing. After three or four minutes, the cellist stood up and spoke: “Thought that I had forgotten to talk, didn’t you?”Passionate about education, cellist Matthew Barley took the audience at St George’s through Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no.
Minimalism is, according to some, ‘The most influential musical movement of the 20th century’. Whether or not this is a little hyperbolical, minimalism does certainly deserve real recognition and exploration, and Kings Place hence merits a great deal of praise for putting on the three-day ‘50 Years of Minimalism’ festival, curated by Igor Toronyi-Lalic and led on the stage by pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. Friday’s middle concert, ‘Europeans & Experimentalists’, presented an intriguing, diverse range of minimalist, quasi-minimalist or sort-of-minimal music which certainly succeeded in showing the breadth of minimalism’s scope in recent decades.
