January 2013

Balkan Fever - Kristjan Järvi/Theodosii Spassov/Vlatko Stefanovski/Miroslav Tadic

Thu 31 Jan 2013, Barbican

The Times, 5 Feb 2013
Tottering rubato? No problem at all. Rustic clarinet? Over on the left. As for the orchestra’s passion, it was close to toxic; no wonder that by the end Järvi was almost kneeling on the floor.
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Arts Desk, 1 Feb 2013
Once in a while a bit of indulgence is exactly what is called for, and last night the LSO were the answer to every craving neglected by a balanced London diet of briskly efficient orchestral standards and bracing contemporary fare.
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Bachtrack, 1 Feb 2013
I was struck by the LSO's high quality of individual playing. The solo woodwind parts are extremely prominent, so the principals have to be good - and they were, beautifully phrased and tightly in time with the rest of the orchestra - most notable was Chris Richards on clarinet.
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Classical Source, 2 Feb 2013
As a coming together of Eastern authenticity and Western sophistication, it made for an undeniably heady listen.
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Ives/Copland/Carter/John Adams - John Adams/St Lawrence String Quartet

Sun 27 Jan 2013, Barbican

The Sunday Times, 3 Feb 2013
By a wonderful creative paradox, the more brazenly Adams borrows, the more vigorously inventive his writing becomes. Absolute Jest could stand beside certain Stravinsky scores as a masterpiece of thievery.
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Financial Times, 31 Jan 2013
Adams is not the most elegant conductor in the world and his performances sometimes felt four-square, but sheer energy kept them bowling along.
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The Times, 30 Jan 2013
...densely packed intellectual high-fibre, both deeply assimilated and seemingly spontaneously recreated in a performance that left one exhausted and inspired.
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The Guardian, 29 Jan 2013
Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra can seem one of his most forbidding scores, but Adams and the LSO gave it a better sense of shape and accumulating drama than any live performance I've previously heard.
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Bachtrack, 30 Jan 2013
Adams’ short stay at the Barbican ended with a concert whose performance was dedicated and respectful, and whose programme was as good humoured, intelligent and entertaining as one could reasonably expect.
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Arts Desk, 28 Jan 2013
The LSO gave everything Adams asked of them, romping into head-on collisions and sidling their way niftily out of disasters, in a slapstick routine where every pratfall got its laugh.
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Classical Source, 28 Jan 2013
Under Adams's attentive direction the LSO despatched this piece to the manner born
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UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica John Adams - John Adams/LSO Strings/St Lawrence String Quartet

Wed 23 Jan 2013, LSO St Luke's

The Sunday Times, 3 Feb 2013
Stylish and energetic, if a touch dapper, as a conductor, he delivered a bracing Bartok Dance Suite to open the first ­programme, and a seductive Livre de Baudelaire
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The Observer, 27 Jan 2013
His early signature piece, Shaker Loops, [was] performed with brilliant and tremulous quake and shake by the LSO String Orchestra
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Arts Desk, 24 Jan 2013
...in the excellent acoustics of St Luke’s, the LSO trio added a resonance and a rumble that really charged up the engine, bounced into life by a knee-flexing Adams as conductor.
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Financial Times, 24 Jan 2013
The piece was written for the St Lawrence String Quartet, who were brilliant to hear, exhausting to watch. They will also be playing Absolute Jest with the LSO on Sunday.
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Bartok/Debussy/John Adams - John Adams/Dawn Upshaw

Thu 17 Jan 2013, Barbican

The Guardian, 20 Jan 2013
As the LSO's superb, unwavering performance showed, the intervening years haven't diminished the power and majesty of [Harmonielehre]; and the ghosts of the late 19th- and early 20th-century composers – Debussy, Sibelius, Mahler and Schoenberg – that haunt its pages seem just as potent today.
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Bachtrack, 19 Jan 2013
In this piece, John Adams had an animated LSO completely in his thrall, responding in a flash to his commands and together fashioning a memorable account of this contemporary classic. For all the historical ghosts this concert summoned up, the hero of the evening was very much alive.
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Arts Desk, 18 Jan 2013
what flipped the stomach in last night’s performance were not so much the rising, plunging string lines at the movement’s heart, nor the magnesium-flare climaxes incandescent in the hands of a tireless LSO, but those harmonies "constantly morphing" – as he describes Wagner in Hallelujah Junction – to steer us into strange new regions.
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Edward Seckseron, 18 Jan 2013
The energy generated from this music and the LSO’s playing of it was immense and as three piccolos sprinkled stardust over Adams’ finale and, like ET (bless you, John Williams), we left the earth’s atmosphere on the back of myriad pulsations and a retro-rocket of bellowing horns you could feel the audience experiencing that gravitational urge to leave their seats. And they did.
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Classical Source, 18 Jan 2013
the LSO’s collective virtuosity made this dazzling complex work sound deceptively simple
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Elgar Cello Concerto/Mozart Requiem - Yutako Sado/Tim Hugh

Sun 13 Jan 2013, Barbican

The Guardian, 15 Jan 2013
Hugh's warm-toned musicianship and Sado's sensitive direction made one hear the work afresh to a degree that would have seemed unlikely in such an iconic work.
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Evening Standard, 14 Jan 2013
Singing out unencumbered by scores, with crackling consonants and commitment to match, the choir brought a disciplined exhilaration to the party that Sado was able to mould into a satisfying account.
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Classical Source, 14 Jan 2013
Hugh’s performance was tantalisingly full of insight and identification, touchingly serious and objective, with a lightness of tone that hinted at ‘soul’ rather than trying to reproduce it. The LSO’s playing proved how Elgar’s spare scoring gives the concerto its chamber-like intimacy.
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