Classical CDs: Civil service, bassoon laments and a historic keyboard

CLASSICAL CDS Classical & late-romantic piano, 20th century symphonies, a sprightly nonagenarian

Classical and late-romantic piano music, plus 20th century symphonies and a sprightly nonagenarian

 

Mozart LevinMozart: The Piano Sonatas (Robert Levin, playing Mozart’s fortepiano) (ECM New Series)

theartsdesk at the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2022 - a safe space to reflect on horrors

Masha Gessen, Shostakovich and Shakespeare’s Prospero wrestle order from chaos

Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you know his writing or not, and you should – with Bacon, Swift and Orwell. The same goes for speechifying. That level I witnessed, at the start of my three days at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, from Masha Gessen delivering the Hubert Butler Annual Lecture, and at the end from Professor Roy Foster, Fiona Shaw and the winner of this year’s Huber Butler Essay Prize, Kevin Sullivan.

Classical CDs: mediation, survival and the conquering of shyness

CLASSICAL CDS Two conductors get the big box treatment, plus contemporary choral music and the return of a minimalist master

Two conductors get the big box treatment, plus contemporary choral music and the return of a minimalist master

 

Karel Ancerl liveKarel Ančerl: Live Recordings (Supraphon)

Gillam, NYOS, Hasan, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - stunning variety from the new generation

★★★★ GILLAM, NYOS, HASAN, USHER HALL Stunning variety from the new generation

Over 100 young people play at the highest level in Respighi, Harle and Shostakovich

I expected the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s Usher Hall concert to be jam-packed with a joyful melee of admiring friends and relatives. This is a vast orchestra of over 100, and it wouldn’t take that many aunts and uncles to fill the Usher’s cavernous spaces, but in the event the audience for this inspiring and diverse programme was disappointingly thin.

Kanneh-Mason, LPO, Bloxham, Congress Theatre, Eastbourne review - stark Russian contrasts

★★★★ KANNEH-MASON, LPO, BLOXHAM, EASTBOURNE Shostakovich framed by Mussorgsky and Borodin

Shostakovich's enigmatic Second Cello Concerto framed by Mussorgsky and Borodin

With a predictable Sheku sell-out in the hall, the context of post-Eunice clean-up and current teetering on the brink with Russia lent a strangely unsettling and salutary resonance to the programme of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto framed by Mussorgsky and Borodin.

Stikhina, Kowaljow, LSO, Noseda, Barbican review - dramatic songs of death, electrifying dances of life

★★★★★ STIKHINA, KOWALJOW, LSO, NOSEDA, BARBICAN Dramatic songs of death, electrifying dances of life

Blazing Beethoven Seventh follows the darkness of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony

“This symphony comprises 11 songs about death and lasts about one hour,” the conductor Mark Wigglesworth declared before a second New York performance of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth – people had left in droves during the first – only to see a swathe of his audience look anxiously at their watches.

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