mon 20/10/2025

Classical Reviews

Kanneh-Mason, Britten Sinfonia, Shave, Milton Court - a grin and a big beaming smile

Bernard Hughes

Schubert’s Fifth Symphony is one of those pieces whose existence in the modern world hangs on the most tenuous of threads. After its posthumous premiere the score was lost for half a century before a set of parts resurfaced, and the work was saved for posterity.

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Lapwood, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - journeys into space

Robert Beale

Kahchun Wong’s second Bridgewater Hall concert of the new season was partly an introduction to the Hallé’s artist-in-residence for 2025-26, Anna Lapwood. The star organist brought a new piece by Max Richter for organ, choir and orchestra and a recent one by Olivia Belli for organ solo – both on the theme of space travel.

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theartsdesk at the New Ross Piano Festival - Finghin Collins’ musical rainbow

David Nice

High on the hill of fascinating New Ross in County Wexford sits its greatest treasure, the ruined 13th century Gothic beauty of St Mary’s. Unless you come at it from the east, its glories are concealed behind the working church which completes it and takes the place of the old nave, built in 1813 and “improved” twice later that century.

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Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place review - music of hope from a young composer

Bernard Hughes

Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of contemporary pieces – including several premieres – by horn superstar Ben Goldscheider and string quartet Brother Tree Sound, “curated”, as the current lingo has it, by young composer Ben Nobuto, whose high-spirited and invigorating music finished things on a high.

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Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - moving lyricism in Elgar’s concerto

Robert Beale

Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist in their performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the season’s opening concert at the Bridgewater Hall (Truls Mørk having had to withdraw).

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Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manchester review - joy, insight, imagination and unanimity

Robert Beale

The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester Camerata that marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the RNCM’s Junior Fellowship programme.

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Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing emotional workouts

David Nice

Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very eve of lockdown in 2020. The work’s dying fall then was echoed by the spectral drift ending Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony. This time Frang’s equal as the greatest of violinists, Janine Jansen, faced the daunting solo role fearlessly, and the riproaring end of  Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony proved that this team is here to stay. 

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Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fleshcreep in two uneven halves

David Nice

Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša went for fleshcreep: too little of Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin – given a chorus, he could have done the half-hour ballet, not just the suite – and too much of a spooky thing in a big Dvořák cantata.

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Hadelich, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - youth, fate and pain

Robert Beale

Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26 season at the Bridgewater Hall. One was “Fountain of Youth” (the programme title and also that of Julia Wolfe’s nine-minute work that began its orchestral content) and the other “Grasping pain, embracing fate” (used as a kind of strapline).

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Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Heras-Casado, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - flames of joy and sorrow

David Nice

35 years ago, persona-now-non-grata John Eliot Gardiner revealed how performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito allying period instruments with great voices could electrify in a new way. And here we were last night with Pablo Heras-Casado, a conductor as at home in Wagner at Bayreuth as he clearly is with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, stunning us with a consistently vigilant and alive Mozart Requiem.

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