Classical CDs Weekly: Falla, Ravel, Antoine Tamestit, The American Brass Quintet

CLASSICAL CDS WEEKLY French and Spanish piano music, plus seductive viola sounds and phenomenal brass playing

French and Spanish piano music, plus seductive viola sounds and phenomenal brass playing

 

Osborne's RavelFalla: Nights in the Garden of Spain, Ravel: Piano Concertos Steven Osborne (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ludovic Morlot (Hyperion)

Ensemble InterContemporain, Wigmore Hall

★★★ ENSEMBLE INTERCONTEMPORAIN, WIGMORE HALL Eccentricity inspires colour, nuance and slapstick from young composer Matteo Franceschini

Eccentricity inspires colour, nuance and slapstick from young composer Matteo Franceschini

The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall.

Classical CDs Weekly: Eisler, Janáček, Ravel

Serious-minded film scores, historically informed French ballet and unmissable string quartets


Eisler Film MusicEisler: Hangmen Also Die and other film scores Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Johannes Kalitzke (Capriccio)

Aimard, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH

Unearthed Stravinsky is a revelation, while Ligeti and Ravel dazzle

A new work by Igor Stravinsky is always going to be a major event, so Sunday evening’s UK premiere of his rediscovered Funeral Song was hotly anticipated. The score disappeared after its first performance and was thought lost in the Russian Revolution, but the orchestral parts were rediscovered at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 2015, and, after a modern premiere at the Mariinsky in December last year, the work is now being performed around the world.

Christine Rice, Julius Drake, Middle Temple Hall

CHRISTINE RICE, JULIUS DRAKE, MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL Glorious abandonment and perfect technique from one of the world's great mezzos

Glorious abandonment and perfect technique from one of the world's great mezzos

To catch the searing desolation of a lover scorned, you need to be the complete artist, with temperament and technique in perfect equilibrium. Mezzo Christine Rice has taken us from Berlioz's Marguerite and Mozart's Donna Elvira at English National Opera via Birtwistle's Ariadne to Haydn's, and - most taxing of all - the end of an affair by telephone in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine.

Bavouzet, BBCPO, Collon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

A new mirror on Ravel, left-hand piano virtuosity and subtle Shostakovich

Colin Matthews’s arrangements for orchestra of the 24 Debussy Préludes (originally commissioned by the Hallé) have been widely admired. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday night began with three of Ravel’s five piano Miroirs, two of them orchestrated by Matthews (one a world premiere) and one by the late Steven Stucky.

Gerhardt, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place

GERHARDT, AURORA ORCHESTRA, COLLON, KINGS PLACE Heart and soul, song and dance, in vivacious 'Cello Unwrapped' launch

Heart and soul, song and dance, in vivacious 'Cello Unwrapped' launch

What's not to like, or love, would have to be the sensible response to both the opening programme of Kings Place's year-long Cello Unwrapped festival at Kings Place and its life-enhancing execution.

Natalie Clein: 'The cello is part of my being'

'THE CELLO IS PART OF MY BEING' Natalie Clein writes for theartsdesk as Cello Unwrapped opens at Kings Place

The acclaimed musician writes for theartsdesk about her contributions to the year-long Cello Unwrapped season at Kings Place

The cello is so deeply engrained in my fingers, my imagination, it’s part of my being – my life would feel amputated without it. You fall in love with the instrument, the music, and then you embark on the life-long task of trying to get closer to that beguiling musical ideal. That’s the drug, the contract you sign with the devil. Every day I think how lucky I am that I can dive into a score and work at it physically.

theartsdesk in Budapest: Prophecy in the world's best concert hall

RIP PETER EÖTVÖS 1944-2024 A bewitching, multi-layered Budapest challenge to Orbán's insularity

Great Hungarian musicians look outwards as the country's government closes the door

August 1914, September 2001, all of 2016: these are the dates Hungary's late, great writer Péter Esterházy served up for the non-linear narrative of his friend Péter Eötvös's Halleluja - Oratorium Balbulum. Its Hungarian premiere in one of the world's best concert halls, part of the astounding Müpa complex on the Danube in Budapest, was bound to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's anti-immigrant policy with the libretto's talk of borders and fences, and fear of the other.

theartsdesk Q&A: Pianist Idil Biret at 75

IDIL BIRET AT 75 Revisit this interview as the legendary Turkish pianist gives a rare London recital

A great artist's life, from lessons with legends to playing marathons from memory today

Has any living pianist had a richer or more charmed life than Idil Biret? As a child prodigy she studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Alfred Cortot, and both there and in Germany with Wilhelm Kempff. At the age of four she was reproducing Bach Preludes and Fugues on the family piano in Ankara simply from hearing them on the radio. When she was seven the Turkish Parliament passed "Idil's Law", enabling not her but also other gifted children to study abroad.