Page 324 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

27 March 2024

ALBUM REVIEW
Thomas Dausgaard: Bartok review —

played with precision and vim

Also reviewed: Dani Howard’s Orchestral Works
Geoff Brown
Wednesday March 27 2024, 5.00pm, The Times

The Danish composer Thomas Dausgaard
THOMAS GRNDAHL
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When a well-established 20th-century composer turns 143, as Bela Bartok did this week, you

might assume that the music composed can spring no further surprises. Sample the first track,

however, on the third of the Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard’s albums devoted to Bartok’s

orchestral output, and you could still be pulled up short.

What work is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra playing, with its magical, slightly

Wagnerian sounds suggesting the natural world waking up via a sustained and tremulous C-
major chord, dappled with horn calls and early morning mist? It’s the pantomime ballet The