The jazzical nature of this ostensibly religious piano cycle invites an array of approaches that range from reverential grandeur to gaudy showmanship, finds Peter Quantrill
In the summer of 1944, the head of music at French radio asked the 35-year-old Olivier Messiaen, and the Catholic writer Maurice Toesca, for a reflection on the Nativity in words and music, to be broadcast over the Christmas season. Beyond its title, there is nothing very Christmassy about the piano cycle that became Vingt Regards, which may be why Messiaen's contribution was eventually shelved.
This month we review: Scottish CO/Maxim Emelyanychev, Pina Napolitano, Wiener Concert-Verein/Zlabinger, etc, Dubois, Orfeo Orch/Vashegyi and Household Cavalry Band, St George's Chapel Winds Orch.
Gut or steel? Repeats, or straight through? Pathos or plain speaking? Peter Quantrill looks behind the notes of an enigmatic masterpiece and asks 'What is Haydn up to'?
A quick reminder: tonal music – indeed almost all western music for that matter – is built from 12 equally separated notes within the compass of an octave. Each tonality (C major, D minor, etc) uses eight of those notes in a scale: hence octave, 1-8. The root chord of each tonality (also called key signature) contains the first, third, fifth and eighth notes of the scale, 1-3-5-8.
Christmas entertainment, orchestral showpiece or a human drama? This farewell to the stage is all three, says Peter Quantrill, as he sits down with boxes of Sugar-Plum Fairies
How did Nutcracker ever catch on? Following the premiere in St Petersburg in December 1892, one critic delivered the coup de grace. 'First of all, Nutcracker can in no event be called a ballet. It does not comply with even one of the demands made of a ballet. Ballet, as a basic genre of art, is mimed drama and consequently must contain all the elements of normal drama.'
Walking the thin red line between public acclaim and official condemnation, Lyatoshynsky embodies the art and the politics of his time, says Peter Quantrill
Ukraine had been a neglected outpost of Imperial Russia long before it was incorporated within the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) in 1922. Accordingly, born in 1895 into a prosperous and cultivated middle-class family, Borys Lyatoshynsky received a typically thorough state education at one of the boys' schools in the city of Zhytomyr, in north-west Ukraine.
This month we review: Cleveland Orchestra/Welser-Möst, Iceland SO/Ollikainen, Helsinki Chamb Ch/Schweckendiek and Elizabeth Atherton, Jess Dandy, Peter Rose, BBC PO/Storgards.
Oratorio, opera, or both? Peter Quantrill looks at Handel's Christian tragedy, and the stagings and recordings that have given it long overdue recognition as his masterpiece
It is, apparently, impossible to write about Handel's penultimate oratorio without quoting the composer's own gloomy view of its failure at the box office when it was first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre, London, in March 1750. 'The Jews will not come to it because it is a Christian story; and the Ladies will not come because it is a virtuous one.'
This month we review: Fuge, Williams, Singapore SO/Venzago, Freiburg Baroque/Von Der Goltz, Lied Haga, Apekisheva and Weser-Renaissance Bremen/Manfred Cordes.