Maurizio Pollini – the end?
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
9M ago
Maurizio Pollini,  Royal Festival Hall, London Maurizio Pollini was, in his prime, arguably the greatest pianist in the world. In recent years there’s been a  falling-off from his once immaculate technical control, but at 81 he still fills large halls. And so he did at the Southbank, for an eagerly anticipated recital he’d postponed three months previously for reasons of ill health. Opening with Schumann’s Arabesque, he brought out that work’s unassuming conversational charm, with its inner voices sweetly contending. Then, after applause, something un-programmed and sinister came: a ..read more
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Musics can die… a sermon to the converted
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Musics can die… I was born in Conwy, a fishing village in north Wales, and many of my earliest memories are of singing. The Second World War was at its darkest hour, and my father was fighting in France. There was no cinema, and nobody we knew had a gramophone. So singing was an integral part of daily life. For me it began as my mother sang me to sleep at night, initially with ‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes’, a lullaby written in the 17th century by Thomas Dekker. The Beatles appropriated it for their Abbey Road album in 1969, and more recently John Lewis harnessed it for a Christmas TV adver ..read more
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Stephen Hough in the ascendent
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Composer, belle-lettrist, polemicist, novelist, painter, teacher, and failed priest – as well as pianist – the newly-knighted Stephen Hough must sometimes lose track of his multifarious activities. Last month the Takacs Quartet released a recording of his delicately allusive first string quartet; this month Hyperion are releasing Musica callada, his new Mompou Cd, while Faber are publishing his autobiography under the teasing title Enough. I catch him before a rehearsal for the Wigmore premiere of his new song-cycle with Nicky Spence as soloist. Enough already! The ebullient figure who greets ..read more
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The ROH Flute – a masterpiece of staging
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
The Magic Flute Royal Opera House, London There are a few opera productions which never grow stale, they just get better, and so it is with director David McVicar’s version of The Magic Flute. It was premiered two decades ago, and its own magic has, if anything, brightened with time. But for that to happen it requires top-of-the-range soloists, and although in this revival not everyone on stage is in that category, the show currently boasts two astonishing performers – Aigul Khismnatullina, who hails from Tatarstan, as the Queen of the Night, and the Hungarian-Romanian baritone Gyula Orendt as ..read more
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In memoriam Lars Vogt
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Lars Vogt remembered, By Michael Church   Can one play vibrato on the piano? Since it’s just a box of hammers, with each making only momentary contact with its string, the common-sense answer must be no. So when, in the course of an interview in 2008, the German pianist Lars Vogt casually remarked that the reverse was true – that though, theoretically, you can’t demonstrate the difference between vibrato and non-vibrato on the piano, you actually can do so – it seemed worthwhile asking him to explain. In reply he went to the instrument, modestly warning me that his little demo might turn ..read more
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Evgeny Kissin on Russian anti-Semitism, in an interview with Michael Church
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
It’s an ill wind… Temporarily prevented from performing in Verbier by tendonitis in his left shoulder, Evgeny Kissin suddenly has time on his hands, and is in a mood, I’m told, to give an interview. So I jump straight in, because this is a man who normally does his best to avoid giving any interviews at all. What has triggered this volte face? I get the answer before I’ve even had the chance to ask my first question, as he launches into a diatribe, eyes blazing with fury: ‘We’re sitting here in Switzerland, and this morning I read that this beautiful country has refused to treat wounded Ukrain ..read more
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Afghan musicians in London
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Orchestral Music of Afghanistan Afghan soloists plus the Oxford Philharmonic EartH, Hackney [the capitalised H is correct] Qur’an scholars will never agree on the vexed question of whether the enjoyment of music is – or is not – haram, a sin. All Muslim societies sit somewhere along the spectrum between the joyful embrace of music, and outright condemnation of it. The Afghan tragedy is that that passionately musical nation should now be in the grip of a small group of music-hating misogynist psychopaths. Dominated by the mellow-toned rubab, traditional Afghan music reflects a rich blend of inf ..read more
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Micheli’s ‘Alcina’ at Glyndebourne – a provocative triumph
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Alcina Glyndebourne Festival Opera, West Sussex   5 stars In Francesco Micheli’s new production of Handel’s Alcina, the lights go up on a little family whose dysfunctional demeanour suggests misery. Then the stage fills with grey-suited speculators and their business plans. Then – bam! – we face bold neon adverts for a down-town variety show called ‘Isola d’Alcina’ – ‘Alcina’s Island’, with a fish-tailed mermaid inviting us in. Mystifying? That’s just the overture. Cut then to a story whose complexity makes the brain reel. Alcina is a sexually voracious enchanter who turns her discar ..read more
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A powerful and convincing Butterfly at the ROH
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
Madama Butterfly Royal Opera House, London, 4 stars Nobody could accuse Covent Garden of backwardness in virtue-signalling. They recently announced plans for trigger-warnings when murder, rape, and sexual exploitation were on the agenda: difficult, because such things are standard fare in grand opera. These days it’s enough for an opera to be branded ‘a work of its time’ for the axe to be brought out, regardless of the fact that that phrase is applicable to every work, from every period in history. The Royal Opera’s 20-year-old Leiser-Caurier production of Madama Butterfly had been scheduled f ..read more
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From Glyndebourne a weird Boheme, with brilliant principals
Michael Church's blog
by Michael Church
1y ago
  La bohème Glyndebourne Festival Opera,  3 stars It’s a while since I read an interview with an opera director as puffed up with vanity as Floris Visser seems to be. It seems to matter more to him that an audience should recognise his personal imprint on a production, than whether he’s served the work as it deserves. In an interview about his production of Bohème he proudly asserts that he’s ‘beaten Puccini at his own game’, by finding three images which allow him to probe the work in a ‘metaphysical’ way which goes deeper than anyone has gone before. First, Mimi’s candle in Act One ..read more
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