The OAE has long been aiming to educate audiences. Attempts to enlighten us on this occasion were both instructive and haphazard. Notes and spoken introductions were partially informative but failed to disclose the number of movements for each piece or give notice of the abrupt transition from Mozart’s Don Giovanni offcuts into Gluck’s Dance of …
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Anvil Read More »
The Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s appearance at the Anvil completed its seven-concert tour of the UK under its energetic new chief conductor Eva Ollikainen. There was warmth to the strings, a distinctive woodwind timbre and clear-cut brass. The players gave their all, nothing routine, their dedication and responsiveness self-evident. METACOSMOS (2017) by Anna Thorvaldsdottir opened, for the New York Philharmonic, is …
One might ordinarily associate John Eliot Gardiner with the performance of Baroque music, but he has made several acclaimed recordings of Mendelssohn with the LSO and a disc of Elgar with the Vienna Philharmonic. Judging from this superb account of Dvořák’s rarely performed Fifth Symphony, one might be allowed to speculate if Gardiner will be …
Philharmonia Orchestra/John Eliot Gardiner at The Anvil, with Alice Coote Read More »
As adventurous as Kirill Karabits is when planning repertoire for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, British music does not appear at the top of his to-do list. So far this season only Elgar (First Symphony and Cello Concerto) and Walton (Violin Concerto) have featured on the schedule, so it was a special treat to hear Elgar’s …
A Czech orchestra playing Czech music might ordinarily have generated a healthy audience at any concert venue. Whether owing to unfamiliarity with Martinů or Janáček’s gruesome tale of suicide and torture, the Anvil was disappointingly half-full. Nevertheless, the commitment of Dennis Russell Davies and the Brno Philharmonic was undimmed. Certainly Taras Bulba blazed with conviction, …
