Anthony Marwood MBE : Reviews
DIRECTOR / VIOLIN
Steven Mackey: Beautiful Passing – Music for Violin & Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Canary Classics, 2022
“Marwood’s performance is, throughout, outstanding. His finger work is precise, tone warm, and feel for Passing’s sharp contrasts of tone and gesture secure. Particularly impressive are the violinist’s accounts of the furious cadenza, with its distortion-like effects, and its serene final episode.”
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, November 2022
“(Marwood) led Haydn’s Symphony no. 8 in G major “Le Soir” with a delightful sense of brightness, the first movement bouncing lightly while balancing the delicate winds against the strings. The slow movement had the intimacy of expanded chamber music, and the finale produced the jolliest storm I’ve heard in a long time.”
“…Elgar’s Sospiri, on the other hand, was rich, lovely and all-too-fleeting, a ripe contrast to the dances of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale where Marwood himself revelled in the Satanic central role, devilish whirls and leaps escaping from his violin like sulphurous puffs of smoke, with tongue-in-cheek embellishments from the winds and brass.”
“In the fast and furious Allegro molto of the last movement, we hear the full range of Marwood’s power as a solo violinist, and the music whirls to a close – to great cheers from the audience. Marwood hoped to highlight Weill’s youthful concerto and its spikiness and unusual harmonies have gone down a treat with the audience, judging from the comments on the way out.
“A masterly performer of the violin Marwood melded his exceptional gift for artistry with an indubitable technique.”
Marwood & Crabb / Wigmore Hall, July 2022
“In the Divertimento from Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss they seemed to enter the sound world of Piazzolla, with bursts of vivid theatre and Marwood powerful on the G string. They neatly negotiated Stravinsky’s quirky shifts of direction, and Marwood handled its considerable technical demands with style. To the first movement of the Suite from Much Ado about Nothing – Korngold’s decidedly gemütlich take on Shakespeare – Marwood brought a suppleness that was very engaging, while his tone was full-bodied in the gruff March; the Garden Scene yielded from him gorgeous lyricism, underpinned by the richness of the accordion, before a joyous final Hornpipe.”
Tanglewood Music Festival, June 2021
“None could outshine special guest Anthony Marwood, the featured soloist in Ligeti’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Ending as it does with an extended and totally exposed cadenza — Marwood used one composed by Adès — this concerto demands Olympian-caliber endurance from its soloist, and Marwood surely would have run away with the gold.”
Thomas Adès’ “Concentric Paths” (Andrew Manze and the London Philharmonic Orchestra – Royal Festival Hall)
Marwood and Manze captured both the rigour of the structure and the slipperiness of its articulation. At the close, the admiration of the LPO players was warmly evident, while Manze – a fine fiddler himself – shook his head and smiled, seemingly in disbelief at Marwood’s relaxed dexterity.
Seen and Heard International (December, 2019)
Berg Violin Concerto with Jacksonville SO, February 2018
“Marwood performed with the conviction and directness needed to pull off such a demanding work to full effect; none of the towering technical challenges of the score seemed to cause him the slightest concern, and throughout he displayed a control that colored the lines with a seemingly endless variety of light and shade.”
The Florida Times-Union, February 2018
Walton Violin Concerto with BBC SSO/Hyperion, July 2017
“Anthony Marwood’s unflashy individualism seems to be operating at an opposite pole to the Heifetz way, and generates memorable results of its own. While Marwood has all the virtuosity that the music demands, nothing is rushed; even with the extremes of pace and stop-start manner of the Presto capriccioso second movement, the design here hangs together quite naturally. He searches out remarkable colours, too – as in the first movement’s orchestral reprise of the main theme, where the shadowy, introspective tone he brings to its countermelody mesmerises the ear.” (Performance: four stars)
BBC Music Magazine, July 2017
“Dazzling, angular, muscular: Walton’s music played just as it should be… here’s a Walton Concerto with real bone and sinew. Anthony Marwood has the technique to encompass the dazzling fingerwork designed with Heifetz in mind, and his wiry vibrato and fat-free tone on the upper strings recall an older, less indulgent approach to music which isn’t all long Romantic lines and softly caressing orchestral colour… Marwood concentrates on the arresting melancholy of the opening Andante and needle-point sardonic humour of the Scherzo. His success in tying together the variation episodes of the long finale draws it within the circle of similarly ambitious concerto structures by composers as disparate as Elgar, Berg and Shostakovich … An unqualified success.”
The Strad, July 2017
“Anthony Marwood proves an enviably secure and articulate soloist”
“he and Brabbins […] generate a nourishing rapport, and their consistently absorbing performance will unquestionably give lasting pleasure.”
Gramophone, July 2017
Phillips Collection Recital, April 2017
“The duo created a genuine dialog between instruments, evoking mountain streams, folk song and the ebb and flow between poignancy and the acerbic so characteristic of Janacek.”
“The danger of playing the Beethoven sonatas on modern instruments is the tendency of the more powerful piano to overwhelm the violin. Madzar and Marwood maintained, however, a delicate balance throughout, even in the full-blooded scherzo and finale. The fine voicing of the slow movement created an aura of touching nobility and grace.”
“Filled with kaleidoscopic color, exhilarating tempos and the impudent sarcasm with which Prokofiev loves to veil even his most tender utterances, it was a performance as perceptive as it was brilliant.”
The Washington Post, April 2017
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, June 2015
“The current state of classical music might be immeasurably improved if there were more musicians like Anthony Marwood.
…doubling in the role of conductor, he can transform the sound of an orchestra to match his own aesthetic as soloist. He moulds his accompanying players like a sculptor with putty.”
“From meditative stillness to demonic passion and a feathery ghostliness at its conclusion, Marwood and the ASO turned in a thoroughly mesmerising performance of this remarkable work.
One only wishes there could be more concerts like this.”
The Australian, June 2015
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, June 2015
“Soloist Anthony Marwood… played the solo part with empathetic intensity, capturing a sound of distinctive isolation and beauty.”
Sydney Morning Herald, June 2015
Irish Chamber Orchestra, October 2014
“The performance of Enescu’s Octet was very possibly one of the best performances that the RDS, if not the city, has seen for a considerable time.”
Golden Plec, October 2014
Yellow Barn Festival July 2011
“Marwood threw off a big, vibrato-rich sound and a full-throated Romantic abandon, while not neglecting some delicate refinements such as a perfectly modulated spiccato”
Thomas Ades Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra March 2011
“The work was written for violinist Anthony Marwood, who last night gave it a reading that was deft, vigorous, and coolly gleaming.”
Boston Globe
“Is there nothing Anthony Marwood cannot do? He plays the violin, acts, dances, and can do all at once. He directs the Irish Chamber Orchestra, plays with the Florestan Piano Trio, commissions composers, jointly runs his own festival and has a network of worldwide collaborators. To cap it all, this consummate artist is blessed with boundless energy, intellectual curiosity and creative wizardry”
BBC Music Magazine
“He’s a magic name in the business”
The Independent
“Few musicians serve their metaphorical master as convincingly as British violinist Anthony Marwood. His every endeavour seems to stem from a debt to art, a debt to music. There is nothing that gets in the way of the ultimate goal – the realisation of perfection and honesty in his craft”
Sunday Tribune, Ireland
“If there were rock-star equivalents in the classical music world, ace British violinist Anthony Marwood would be on the list”
The Age, Australia
Thomas Ades concerto with Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Ades/EMI, June 2010
“superb….Anthony Marwood performs astounding feats…”
Boston Globe
Ross Harris concerto (world premiere) with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, May 2010
“Ross Harris’ new Violin Concerto has a strange effect on the listener, who seems to be almost drawn into its creation. It starts hesitantly, the soloist on his own playing fragmentary ideas: then the clarinet enters and his brief melody invites the other woodwind to join him. In effect, the beautifully textured concerto, hovering tantalisingly between tonality and atonality, is at last under way.
The soloist is hardly ever out of the limelight, decorating and rhapsodising on the material. Then the orchestra arrives on a hushed, seamless chord, over which the soloist reflects on its melodic ideas and draws them together. The concerto ends with the orchestra finally bowing out, leaving the soloist to return to the same fragments with which the concerto opened. “Questions finally unanswered,” writes Harris in the briefest of programme notes. It is a work that captures perfectly the essence of our time – it is also a work of extraordinary and haunting beauty.
The success of the performance owed much to the commitment and understanding British violinist Anthony Marwood brought to it. It was a performance that heightened the emotion of the solo line: there was tenderness, mystery and joy of the dance, as well as thrilling virtuosity. The orchestra under Tecwyn Evans’s baton gave enthusiastic support.”
New Zealand Listener
“English violinist Anthony Marwood was electrifying, teasing us with his opening, serpentine solo that fuels the work, fragment by fragment.”
New Zealand Herald
“a dazzling violin role, here played absolutely superbly by eminent English violinist Anthony Marwood”
Dominion Post
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, with Thomas Ades and Steven Isserlis, March 2010
“When Mr. Marwood and Mr. Isserlis took up that theme, their sound was focused yet spectral and haunting. This refreshingly unvoluptuous take on the piece [Ravel Trio] continued in the incisive, spiky account of the macabre, scherzolike second movement and the almost medieval austerity the players brought to the subdued and inexorably slow Passacaille. While the finale had the requisite whirlwind energy, the crunchy, incisive playing never allowed the music to sound flashy.”
New York Times
“…an effortless technique and a beautiful, rich, varied tone that was free and flexible – his Janacek had a spoken, improvisatory quality, but also form and coherence”
Strings Magazine
Schumann Concerto with Australian Chamber Orchestra, September 2009
“In Anthony Marwood’s hands this concerto [Schumann] sounded decidedly virtuosic. Sustaining a rich, full-bodied tone and clear, focused sound, his accurate rapid-fire passagework and sensitive phrasing were particularly impressive”
The Australian
“Marwood’s beautifully intelligent musical conception made him an ideal exponent and champion… the musical vision was compelling”
Sydney Morning Herald
Britten concerto with London Philharmonic, conducted by Marin Alsop, 2007
“Marwood didn’t spare the angst. His playing was tough and sinewy, his tackling of the tricky passages in harmonics by no means facile. In the devilish double-stoppings and glissandi of the scherzo, he and Alsop raised the spirit of Shostakovich”
The Times