Even when dealing with highly original, individual talents, sometimes musicians collaborate and produce something so complete that – not only do you wonder how they never found each other before – it also sounds like they’ve already been working together for years. This is the case with the self-titled debut album by Wyndow, whose core…
Tedd Joselson Records Grieg and Rachmaninov Concertos at Abbey Road Studios
Throughout his composing career, Edvard Grieg stayed mostly clear of large-scale works. In 1868 however, he did write his piano concerto in A minor during a holiday with wife, singer Nina Hagerup, and their young child. He finished revising his concerto much later, in 1907, and it is this version which has lasted in the…
Darkness and Light: Nightlight – Cordelia Williams, piano
Darkness and light pervade Cordelia Williams’ latest release, Nightlight, which explores the many facets of nighttime – its turmoil, terror and tenderness, and the longing for and consolation of light – through a programme of brooding, atmospheric and ultimately consoling music.
Climbing the walls: ‘Jenůfa’, Royal Opera House
Perhaps it’s appropriate that the first opera I’ve seen at Covent Garden since lockdown is this unflinching depiction of confinement and familial dysfunction, Claus Guth’s new staging of Janáček’s masterpiece, ‘Jenůfa’. (Please beware spoilers in this piece – I’ll be roaming around the entirety of the plot, the better to discuss the production.) The drama…
Summer Exhibition 2021 at the Royal Academy of Arts
Summer Exhibitions at the RA are often organised around a single unifying idea – ‘From Life’, say, or ‘Man Made’ – although most years you wonder why they bother, for all the difference it makes to the range (or quality) of submissions. The theme this year, though, ‘Reclaiming Magic’, is apt, because for once the…
Barbican Show of Sculptor and Lighting Designer Isamu Noguchi 1904-1988
In 1988, in the last year of his life, Japanese American artist, Isamu Noguchi, remarked “Art for me is something which teaches human beings how to become more human”. Having just visited the Barbican Centre’s Noguchi show, I can see to what extent art was therapeutic for him. In his sculptures he seems to have…
The American Art Tapes. Voices of Twentieth-Century Art
In 1965 English artist John Jones set off to the US, his objective, to spend a year interviewing America’s greatest artists. The resulting taped interviews provide the material for The American Art Tapes. It’s been a while since I’ve been so gripped by an art book. All of America’s key artists feature, and through them it…
Vital organ: Anna Lapwood, ‘Images’
No matter how long I’ve listened seriously to classical music – and with a mere decade of doing so behind me, I’m still one of the beginners – it’s always a good thing to be reminded that I’ll remain a learner for the duration, until my senses fail. There are always new sounds and new…
The Jukebox Album
The Jukebox Album – Tom Poster (piano) and Elean Urioste (violin) Few of us believed the 2020 lockdown would go on for more than a couple of weeks. In the midst of the initial announcement by government, many musicians – and others – watched in horror as their work dried up overnight. When it became…
Solem Quartet plays Thomas Ades
For their debut album the Solem Quartet embrace the theme of night and day. Heading up the line-up of contemporary composers on this concept album, we have Thomas Adès, with Solem Quartet’s new commission of Four Quarters. Commencing with Nightfall, febrile violins denote ancient stars in distant galaxies with groaning cello and viola signifying earth. In Morning Dew, plucked violin strings…
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