In Wednesday’s (11/3) Evening Standard (London), Josh Neicho writes, “In a square in a small town near Florence, 20 young musicians appear from nowhere and start playing the jaunty first movement of Beethoven’s Second Symphony with brilliance and vim. They swoop up on their tiptoes and back down again. They turn to play, facing each other like vying guitar players in a rock anthem. They beckon to the assembled crowd to follow them inside an empty theatre and proceed to give a performance of the whole work. … There’s a different line-up each time but with many of the same faces, strikingly young and smiling yet performing with the precision and panache of the great symphony orchestras of which most are also members. This is European classical music’s latest phenomenon: Spira Mirabilis. … Spira have wowed critics and audiences across Europe. This week the group heads to London having attracted the attention of the Southbank Centre’s head of music Marshall Marcus, a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), which was also set up to challenge the classical status quo.”
Posted November 3, 2010
