Monday, December 30

Tag: Andrew Manze

Nielsen’s Violin Concerto – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
North West

Nielsen’s Violin Concerto – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Let me let you into a little secret.  When soloists embark on their concerto cadenza (an extended, elaborate virtuosic solo segment where the orchestra stops playing and the soloist takes centre stage) I stop watching what they are doing and ‘people-watch’ the orchestra and conductor.  For there are few things better than watching professionals acknowledge professionals – putting their own instruments down, enrapt, leaning forward for a better look at the action, smiling and even nodding in appreciation at the skill of their fellow performer.  So, it was last night with Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene, the RLPO Young Artist in Residence who was last seen here performing the Korngold Violin Concerto.  The Neilsen Violin Concerto affords not one but two opportuniti...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason performs Weinberg – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
North West

Sheku Kanneh-Mason performs Weinberg – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

I don’t know how many people my age will remember what they were doing on their 25th birthday.  I certainly don’t – probably some real ale bar in Oxford with sticky floors and beer at £2 per pint.  But Shekhu Kanneh-Mason, superstar cellist and the third of seven ridiculously talented musician siblings, may well remember the rapturous reception (and impromptu rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’) he received from the audience at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall last night on the occasion of his reaching a quarter-century. The curtain-raiser was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade for Orchestra.  Born in London in 1875 to an English mother and Sierra Leonean medical student father, Samuel was named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  When the Three Choirs Festival wished to ...