Are your ears ringing?
Hi Steve - yup great evening with Ese and the Voodoo people and a great venue. Good to meet you! Richard
GoGo Penguin at Jazz Alley in Seattle. Very good. The new(ish) drummer seems to fit right in. Loved the duct tape effect on the piano strings.
Just discovered this group. Would love to see them.
Caught a second GoGo Penguin show on Sunday as they were playing multiple nights, this time we brought along some friends who were all converted to GGP fans by the end of the set. Similar set list as prior show, but maybe a tad looser. Really solid.
Last night at the Union Chapel in London, Mavis Staples. I saw her a year or so ago at the same venue and we are both a year or so older. I see on t’internet that she is now 84, but she can still belt them out. On stage for about an hour, not bad given her age!
Anna Lapwood - live, at Birmingham Town Hall.
Shani/CSO & Trifonov
Program
Avni
Prayer
Bates
Piano Concerto
[ENCORE]
Scriabin
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp minor, Op. 23, III. Andante
Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)
Conductor
Lahav ShaniPianist
Daniil TrifonovI’ve seen Shani with Trifonov with Rotterdam last year and the set was ho hum. Whilt Trifonov is an excellent pianist Beethoven’s PC1 was not very fitting of his style. We were most impressed with his short encore piece. So it was not surprised that I really enjoyed his encore piece ( Scriabin ) at the end of Bates’ Loud and large Piano Concerto.
I thought that Bell’s The Elements I have heard was better put together than this mostly percussive and repetitive Bates’. It was like… Symphonic rock meets Mike Oldfields’ Tubular Bells coupled with John Williams’ ET with endless coda! Audience seemed to like it but I was pretty bored. This piece was composed FOR Trifonov and he was having a good time with it.
Pathetique was just too heavy handed for me. From the start, the pause between the notes were too long as if the drama was too artificial and trite. The highlight for sure was the 3rd movement but then Shani could not delivered the last movement with a real deep despair as it should. He let the orchestra hang there for probably the longest golden silence I have experienced. But it felt too gimmicky for me. I think he was moved as when he turned around his eyes were misty.
For a recent live Pathetic I felt that Chailly/Concertgebouw was more matured reading without much gimmick or trite deliberate rubato.
But I have yet to hear suicidal live performance of Adagio surpassing Mravinsky/Leningraad recording from the 50s.
Víkingur Ólafsson
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
Bach - Goldberg Variationen
Yesterday Night
A h@ll of a Piano player, what a genius
Last concert (No. 88) of his world tour
Would have liked to have seen that👍
Fabulous pianist. And relaxed down to earth personality a la gould.
He’ll be back in Chicago next year so hopefully I can catch him at the Orchestra Hall. He will be playing Beethoven pieces!
This guy is fantastic, he is very often at the Elbphilharmonie, but who not? Watching out for this in March 25
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Víkingur Ólafsson - Klavier
Dirigent: Paavo Järvi
PROGRAMM
Johannes Brahms
Konzert für Klavier und Orchester Nr. 2 B-Dur op. 83
Robert Schumann
Sinfonie Nr. 3 Es-Dur op. 97 »Rheinische«
Nice!
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets at The Lighthouse, Poole on 25 June.
Fantastic band and sound. It’s great to hear the old Pink Floyd stuff and a nice tribute to Syd.
Mark Lockheart and Dreamers at Cambridge Modern Jazz thankfully restored to Hidden Rooms after a number of not great venues (Stapleford Granary an exception). TBH didn’t really hit the spot but good to be back nonetheless.
Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, Halle Orchestra Mark Elder farewell concert. Rachmaninov Ist Piano Concerto and Mahler Symphony 5. The latter sounded fantastic from our seats in the stalls. Very sorry to see Elder go as principal conductor but we have had 25 years.
And we can find ourselves in the end of gig photo: