Jonathan Plowright completed his survey of Brahms’s piano music about a year ago (for BIS), and this recital marked the first in a series of six “Brahms Plus” programmes at Wigmore Hall, which runs through to 2020. Plowright’s discography (on Hyperion, too) is substantial and much praised and his Wigmore recital in 2016 proved beyond […]
Jonathan Plowright at Wigmore Hall – Brahms Plus… Bach Read More »
In the mid-1930s the Soviets were on the up – Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian. The Americans too – Copland, Harris, Hanson, Barber. Men among hundreds out to leave their mark. But pre-war Europe was in last rites mode. Elgar, Holst and Delius died within four months of each other, in 1934; Widor, Pierné, Roussel and Ravel
A considerate coupling of two three-movement C-minor Piano Quintets written by contemporaneous Polish pianist-composers; both are expansive pieces, one just short of forty minutes (the Friedman), the other just over. Ludomir Różycki (1883-1953) composed his Piano Quintet in 1913. It is immediately arresting in its dark heavy-heartedness – it may remind of Fauré – and
It’s hard to believe that this recital was Jonathan Plowright’s London Pianoforte Series debut at Wigmore Hall. From his substantial body of work for Hyperion and more recently his Brahms series for BIS, you’d think that that particular milestone was long past. For those with ears to hear, however, at this well-attended concert, it’s obvious
In bringing the action of Verdi’s Un ballo in Maschera (1859) forwards to the Hollywood’s Golden Era on either side of the Second World War, Rodula Gaitanou’s production (revived from 2019) suggests a conspiratorial world of gangsters with men in three-piece suits, plotting behind the façade of neutral panelled walls and fashionable high society. If
The Polish composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and administrator Henryk Melcer-Szczawinski (1869-1928) wrote both of these piano concertos (his only two) in the 1890s. They form Volume 44 of Hyperion’s series devoted to “The Romantic Piano Concerto”. The opening of the First is solemn and stirring, the pianist not wasting time before making a grand entrance,
Born in 1860 in Kurylówka, Poland, Ignacy Jan Paderewski died in New York in 1941 having become an internationally renowned pianist, a composer (famed for Minuet in G) … and, for a short while, between 1919 and 1920, following much activity to help make Poland independent, was both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of his
A splendid CD, one easy to overlook, I suspect, unless you are already smitten with what seems a really lovely series: numerous CDs (DACOCD 349 to DACOCD 619 advises this present release) devoted to piano-music rarities played at Schloss vor Husum and covering the years 1989-2003. This current issue, for 2004, includes various pianists, all
Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Hussum 2004 Read More »
This co-production with the Lyric Opera of Chicago brings a piece conceived for the Broadway stage to the Royal Opera’s repertoire for the first time. But as John Snelson’s intelligent article in the programme points out, Sondheim’s ’Musical Thriller’ (the composer’s own subtitle) is not so easily pigeonholed, and the undoubted ’operatic’ qualities inherent in
