Saint-Saens' “Dance of Death” and Orff's gaudy, medieval satire framed a stunningly-realised new commission from Guy Barker, with Alison Balsom playing against type.
Celebrating 20 years as Artistic Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, David Bintley brings the company to London, where Balanchine’s Serenade acts as a delicate sorbet before the excesses of Bintley’s own Carmina burana.
This was the first time I've been to a concert with a 10:30 kick-off, but then this was the first of its kind. Nor did the inaugural Sport Prom turn out to be merely a game of two halves...
National Ballet of Japan performed artistic director David Bintley’s double bill of his works, Faster and Carmina Burana and they were successful in intepretating the humor and irony conceived in the two innovative pieces.
San Francisco’s dance performance pickings are sparse in September, for such a cultured, cosmopolitan city, amid the seasonal return of the symphony and the opera. Thank goodness for October and the Smuin Ballet, which provides hungry-for-dance patrons with a feast of a performance. This year Smuin Ballet celebrates its 20th anniversary season.
The Orchestre de Paris’ 2013/14 season opened with a cymbal crash. Orages (meaning “thunderstorms” in French) was commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris to the Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury. In this musical storm, sounds hurt each other, as if superimposed.
When Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst had to bow out of this past weekend’s performances of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana due to a recent back injury, the orchestra’s talented young assistant conductor, James Feddeck, inherited a high-profile assignment. The set of four concerts had been heavily promoted and were sold out.
The inter-war years produced some of the most dynamic and popular choral works that have been composed since the 18th century. Tonight’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert, conducted by Hans Graf, combined two very different results of this flowering. Both masterpieces in their own way, they unexpectedly complemented each other and made for an entertaining concert.
One of the pleasures of attending live concerts is discovering sounds that recordings often mask or fail to highlight. Occasionally, the sheer enormity of the experience can be so stunning that I reel from it for days. The “2013 Season Special Event” of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Thursday was one of those occasions.
What a stark contrast between the visual and the aural at last Thursday’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl. On stage was the 79-year-old conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, appearing frail as he shuffled towards the podium; the gauntness of his features accentuated by his suit which hung loosely from his frame.
If ever a concert could be described as a firework, this was it. The stage was ignited with music and we waited for the best bit - that crucial, beautiful explosion of colour. As part of the Colston Hall’s International Classical Season, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra performed the iconic choral work Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1895-1982).
Those of us who are regulars at the Royal Albert Hall know how difficult it can be for an orchestra and choir to really fill that enormous space with sound.
