Classical Reviews
Tiffin Youth Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Jurowski, RFH review - perfect detachment suits public statementsTuesday, 21 January 2025
When Vladimir Jurowski planned this typically unorthodox programme, he could not have known that a disaster even greater, long-term, than 9/11 was going to befall the USA two days after the concert. There is no bad time for a tricky commemoration of the World Trade Center attacks, but close to a presidential inauguration would have been right whatever the outcome. As for an 18th century “Mass in Time of War”, clearly Ukraine and Gaza would still be on the agenda. Read more... |
Celtic Connections: Orchestral Qawwali Project, GRIT Orchestra review - two concerts showcasing the cross-genre power of an orchestraTuesday, 21 January 2025
Once again, Glasgow’s annual winter festival of traditional music from all parts of the world is formed of an astonishingly packed programme of music, dance, trails and poetry in venues throughout the city. This year’s opening weekend saw two distinctly different orchestral concerts, each pushing the boundaries of what an orchestra can be. Read more... |
Sun Rings, Sacconi Quartet, Festival Voices, Kings Place review - lift-off for an exhilarating voyage into the unknownSaturday, 18 January 2025
What better way to start a season about the Earth than by looking back on it from an astronaut’s perspective? At a time when the activities of assorted billionaires and emerging superpowers are making the space race topical again, it feels more than appropriate for Kings Place to begin its Earth Unwrapped programme with Terry Riley’s Sun Rings. Read more... |
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel, Barbican review - an epic journey from gossamer-like intimacy to apocalyptic rageThursday, 16 January 2025
Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela took the Barbican by storm last night with a thrilling account of Mahler’s Third Symphony, his great exploration of the cosmic order, ascending from raw paganism to sublime transcendence. It's technically the longest symphony ever composed, and here it swept the audience through an epic journey that tilted between passages of gossamer-like intimacy and outbursts of apocalyptic rage. Read more... |
German National Orchestra, Marshall, Cadogan Hall review - sheer youthful exuberanceThursday, 16 January 2025
This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of whose players are aged from 14 to 19, make a glorious, powerful sound. Just over 100 teenage musicians packed the extended stage at Cadogan Hall last night, and played to a nearly full house. Read more... |
Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - colour and courage, from Hardanger to MajorcaTuesday, 14 January 2025
Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (or rather, Paris and Majorca) with a final stop in France. A recital that began with two large-scale Norwegian sonatas – one a remarkable discovery – culminated in the ostensibly remote sound-world of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, part-written on the Balearic island. Read more... |
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Wigglesworth, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - Boulez with bonbonsMonday, 13 January 2025
Top Brownie points for the BBC Philharmonic for being one of the first (maybe the first?) to celebrate the birth centenary of Pierre Boulez this year. His Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna was paired somewhat uneasily with a second half of bonbons by Ravel (it’s his 150th anniversary year, too). Read more... |
Liepe, National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, Cottis, NCH, Dublin review - a spirited shot at ShostakovichMonday, 06 January 2025
There’s nothing like an anodyne new(ish) work to give a masterpiece an even higher profile. Rachel Portman‘s Tipping Points, promising to address climate change issues, was so bland and featureless it could have been composed by AI. Any one bar of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, on the other hand, shows originality of throught within a tradition, and unlike the Portman near-vacuum it challenged the musicians of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland to the limits. Read more... |
Davis, National Symphony Orchestra, Maloney, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - operetta in excelsisThursday, 02 January 2025
In one sense it was a New Year’s Day “nearly”, just stopping short of giving us the already great Irish lyric-dramatic soprano Jennifer Davis in the music of the man she was born to sing, Richard Strauss. Berlin will witness her Arabella shortly, but the one Bavarian intruder in the otherwise all-Viennese carnival yesterday afternoon, the Moonlight Music from Capriccio, stopped before the Countess’s final scene. Read more... |
Best of 2024: Classical music concertsTuesday, 31 December 2024
As always, great concerts have outnumbered great opera productions over a year, and all of our national orchestras can be proud of their record. I’ve sometimes started by celebrating youth, and it’s good to be able to do that in the shape of two competition finales totally satisfying as programmes. The palm, though, goes to two veterans who made me wonder at their ease and natural communication. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican revi...
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented...
theartsdesk Q&A: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on...
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is now an...
Bowling For Soup, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton review - nostalg...
Bowling For Soup are celebrating their iconic album, A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, on a fun-filled, energetic tour for its 20th...
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides....
Blu-ray: High and Low
Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of different genres is a given and one of High and Low’s strengths is a seamless blending of various...
The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a bravura, joyous...
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through...
Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway?, Brighton Dome review -...
“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.
The brilliance of...
Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguil...
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper...
Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre...
Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world...