Classical Reviews
Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - fun with abandonSaturday, 18 May 2024
There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy that is hard to resist. Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Mulroy, Wigmore Hall review - songs of love old and newThursday, 16 May 2024
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual programme at the Wigmore Hall last night. Combining the very old and the very new it offered a range of perspectives on texts that have attracted composers over centuries, and showed off the ensemble as one of the best in the business. Read more... |
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of lifeTuesday, 14 May 2024
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often blithely chat about the works’ epic struggle between life and death, creation and destruction, joy and dread. In a comfy hall with a slick orchestra and a polished maestro, all of that can feel abstract and remote. Not last night at the Barbican. Read more... |
Britten Sinfonia, The Marian Consort, Milton Court review - a journey around turbulent spirit GesualdoSunday, 12 May 2024
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who also found time to write music that was – according to some – centuries ahead of its time. He was the El Greco of sound, a rebel against perfectly balanced Renaissance proportions, who went on to influence cultural figures ranging from Stravinsky to Werner Herzog. Read more... |
Gomyo, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - painful brilliance around a heart of darknessSaturday, 11 May 2024
No soloist gets to perform Shostakovich’s colossal First Violin Concerto without mastery of its fearsome technical demands. But not all violinists have the imagination to colour and inflect the Hamlet-like monologue of its withdrawn first movement, or the madness of a 20th century Lear in its poleaxing cadenza, a movement in itself. From her first, deeply eloquent phrases, Karen Gomyo told us that she was one of the few who could. Read more... |
Sansara, Manchester Collective, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - sense of a unique experienceSaturday, 11 May 2024
Manchester Collective have come a long way since their early days of chamber music in dark and dingy Salford basements and former MOT test centres. But they haven’t forgotten what made those pioneering performances special: the sense of a unique experience, and a readiness to chat to the audience as well as playing. Read more... |
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - meeting a musical communicatorFriday, 03 May 2024
Kahchun Wong, the Hallé’s principal conductor from the coming autumn season, presided in the Bridgewater Hall for the first time yesterday since the announcement of his appointment. It was in the last of the four “Rush Hour” concerts recently introduced, which begin at 6pm and are shorter than usual evening programmes, with fairly mainstream classical content and no interval. They seem to be succeeding very well in attracting audiences of all ages. Read more... |
Guildhall School Gold Medal 2024, Barbican review - quirky-wonderful programme ending in an awardThursday, 02 May 2024
While the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra were performing Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie – weirdly, despite its size and difficulty, a repertoire staple – over at the Royal Festival Hall, their Guildhall School counterparts presented a programme of stunning originality. Read more... |
Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journeysTuesday, 30 April 2024
As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The founder-director (in 1990) of Bach Collegium Japan, a distinguished harpsichordist-organist as well as one of the most rigorous and scholarly interpreters of the Baroque legacy, has just completed a tour with the Philharmonia that joyfully embraced a selection of Romantic masterworks. Read more... |
Christian Pierre La Marca, Yaman Okur, St Martin-in-The-Fields review - engagingly subversive pairing falls shortThursday, 25 April 2024
The French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca confesses that – like so many classical musicians – he was at a loss during lockdown as to how to develop his musical career. Then, at a recording for a TV show, he met the street dancer Yaman Okur, who made his name with the hip hop collective Wanted Posse and has collaborated with performers including Madonna. Read more... |
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There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s ...
Always looking dapper and always sounding cool, Barry Adamson is a man who nevertheless seems to be perpetually of another time. Giving off the...
It’s what you dream of in opera but don’t often get: singers feeling free and liberated to give their best after weeks of preparation with a...
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like...
There are many definitions of bravery, and taking on the challenge of embodying John Cleese as Basil Fawlty in Cleese’s own stage...
In many ways, Laufey’s emotionally charged, sold-out...
What with the likes of Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, The Hatton Garden Job and the oeuvre of Guy Ritchie, the...
So Billie Eilish’s new album has had its worldwide midnight release,...
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual...
It’s unusual for a play to be revived with its original director and star, let alone a decade after they premiered the piece. But here we are,...