Video footage shows London Symphony Orchestra’s chief targeted by pro-Ukranians and gay rights activists. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

  After just two instalments in his projected seven-opera Mozart cycle, Rolando Villazón has taken a premature diversion a collection of obscure Mozart concert arias that he found in a Munich music shop. As he’s demonstrated already in Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Villazón is a persuasive Mozart advocate, but he needs all that skill and enthusiasm to make this grab-bag of juvenilia, rejects and odd-jobs hold together. The opening of the aria Aura che intorno spiri must be one of the greatest opening phrases in all Mozart, but the sublimity is intermittent. Many arias hint at genius and then faff about in a stop-start demonstration of genius almost at work. The most intriguing are Con ossequio, con rispetto and La spoco deluso, where one could speculate that Rossini built his career out of Mozart’s reject bin. The earliest aria, Va, dal furor portata, is gob-smacking when judged by the standards of 9-year-old composers, but compared with the Mozart of 20 years later, it’s scarcely must-have. Just how far Mozart progressed during the intervening period is demonstrated in the only German language inclusion, Musst ich auch durch taussend Drachen, sounding so much more mature and dramatic in intent, and…

Finnish composer and conductor awarded the 2014 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Sixty years on and Benjamin Britten’s The Turn Of The Screw, based on Henry James’s “eerie and scary” ghost novella, is still as taut and dramatically intriguing as ever. The ambiguities and questions still remain for many: Does the Governess actually witness the spirits of sexual predator Peter Quint and his equally possessive offsider Miss Jessel working their evil on her two young charges Miles and Flora or is it all her own deranged fantasy? Whatever you decide – or even if you want to decide – the plot is as powerful as ever, aided by Britten’s sparse and evocative orchestration and Myfanwy Piper’s concise, erotically charged libretto. The use of 16 variations on a theme, which with its rising and falling tonal patterns resembles a threaded screw is a master-stroke. It drives the action along without pause through the prologue and two acts and you don’t need to watch this ever-tightening drama to be snared, as the London Symphony Orchestra’s new two-disc set on its LSO Live label eloquently attests. Recorded at the Barbican last year, conductor Richard Farnes, his 17 musicians and an exceptional cast never let the tension lag throughout the two hours. English tenor Andrew Kennedy…

Revered British conductor Sir Colin Davis passed away a few months ago, yet reviewing his last recording still comes a something of a shock. Listening to this live concert performance of Weber’s ghostly masterpiece is a welcome reminder of the virtues that kept this tireless musical advocate at the top of his game for 50 years. Carl Maria von Weber was a regular visitor in the Wagner household while the young Richard was growing up, and nowhere was his influence more clearly felt on the operatic giant- to-be than in his gothic fairytale, Der Freischütz. Davis homes in on that Wagnerian dimension, and if his Weber is a relatively sedate affair next to his blistering Berlioz, it benefits from his other great strengths – instinctive sense of orchestral balance and sensitivity to singers. It’s a big-boned reading and the LSO plays its collective heart out for their Chief. Soloists are ideally memorable and the horn section is to die for. Christine Brewer makes a fine Agathe. Her ample voice is beautifully shaded when required and her prayer is most moving. New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill sings the vacillating hero Max. His voice is clear and penetrating but it’s a tight…

As regular readers will know, I’ve often been unimpressed by Gergiev’s sadly variable LSO Mahler cycle, where he often had even less to say about the music than Ashkenazy. I’m happy to say I was entranced by this 2-CD set from beginning to end. For once, the cliché “unjustly neglected” is totally accurate in describing the shameful overlooking of these three genuine masterpieces. The First and Third have long been my favourite Tchaikovsky symphonies; until now my preferred version of No 1 was the youthful Michael Tilson Thomas with his Boston forces, and in the Third either Bernstein’s 1960s New York Philharmonic or Karajan’s 1980s Berlin Phil. Gergiev’s First, Winter Daydreams, is simply gorgeous. The combination of panache, finesse and imagination in the first movement is wonderful: you can almost feel the chill on the rosy cheeks of Romanov aristocrats with exquisite noses and perfect cheekbones, as they travel through the wondrous winter landscape, swathed in sable in a troika. The tender phrasing of the second subject is worth the price of the set alone. The second movement is a wistful reverie and the scherzo is jewel-like. I’ve often regarded the Second Symphony, the so-called Little Russian, aka Ukraine, as…

In 1910, the Band of the Grenadier Guards serenaded Her Majesty with a selection from Elektra. (George V promptly sent down a message saying he didn’t know what it was that they had just played, but it was never to be played again!) Despite the royal vote of no confidence, the opera has become a modern classic and a classic of modernism, in which Strauss went further harmonically than he would ever again.  In this live 2010 recording, the LSO’s principal conductor shows not only that he appreciates Strauss’s daring orchestrations, but also that he’s a master of the dramatic pacing in Hofmannsthal’s gripping Sophocles adaptation. The members of the orchestra play their hearts out in a finely engineered recording that, thanks to Gergiev, is frequently revelatory. Sadly, this recording has a massive drawback in the Elektra of Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. A pronnounced vibrato across the entire range is the first problem to beset the ear. Coupled with a tendency to fall flat at the top or miss certain key notes altogether, her performance is a bit of a roadcrash. The rest of the cast ranges from superb (Dame Felicity Palmer’s baleful Clytemnestra steals the show)… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…