Classical Reviews
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano, Barbican review – joy in despairMonday, 27 May 2019
As one half of British politics convulsed into a deeper spasm of suicidal fury, it came almost as a relief to hear a great Anglo-Italian conductor lead an impassioned Roman orchestra in a massive, terrifying symphony once described by a (German) maestro as the first example of musical nihilism. Ah, but that’s the paradox of Mahler’s Sixth. Read more...
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Grosvenor, Doric Quartet, Milton Court review - cohesion or collision?Monday, 27 May 2019
Expectations ran high for this final concert in Benjamin Grosvenor’s Barbican/Milton Court series, especially after the magic he and the Doric Quartet wrought in their February performance. Read more... |
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Gershon, Sellars, Barbican review – embodiments of remorseFriday, 24 May 2019
By some strange alignment of the stars, Peter Sellars’s staged version of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St Peter) arrived at the Barbican Hall just as – next door in the theatre – Pam Tanowitz’s directed her dance interpretation of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. Read more... |
Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall review – full-spectrum Bach from a prodigious talentThursday, 23 May 2019
You seldom hear a Champions League-level roar of approval at the Wigmore Hall. Last night, though, Igor Levit drew a throaty collective bark of appreciation from the audience after (for once) an awed hush had followed the final dying cadences of the aria’s return in Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Had he earned it? Absolutely. This recital was first of three devoted to the idea of Variations. Read more... |
Benjamin Grosvenor, Barbican review - virtuosity at its classiestFriday, 17 May 2019
It’s 15 years since Benjamin Grosvenor first strolled onto our TV screens as a prodigiously gifted child in the BBC Young Musician Competition. Today he is a self-possessed young man of 26, in his element on the concert platform, yet without a hint of affectation; and unlike certain musicians who play the same type of music all the time, he ventures constantly into new and sometimes surprising musical territory. Read more... |
Takács Quartet, Wigmore Hall review – strong voices in a glorious groupThursday, 16 May 2019
When critics praise a first-rank string quartet, convention demands they claim that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. True enough, maybe, but with the Takács Quartet, each separate element really does blaze with a soloistic, virtuosic flame. From the first bars of last night’s opener at the Wigmore Hall, as Haydn plays pass-the-parcel with an apparently straightforward tune at the start of his G major quartet Op.76 no. Read more... |
Hardenberger, Pöntinen, Wigmore Hall review - superstar trumpeter shows his classTuesday, 14 May 2019
There can be no questioning trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger’s extraordinary mastery: his big, unforced sound, mellifluous legato, athletic virtuosity and utterly controlled high notes. Read more... |
Mullova, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH review – clear paths through the forestMonday, 13 May 2019
Visit Ainola, Sibelius’s woodland house by Lake Tuusula north of Helsinki, and you’ll be told the story of the green stove. It appears that the famously synaesthetic Finnish composer identified the shade of his heating installation with the key of F major. Read more... |
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - inner magic eventually joins outward masteryThursday, 09 May 2019
Nearly 17 years ago, Simon Rattle inaugurated his era at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic with Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Read more... |
Clara Mouriz, Roderick Williams, Joseph Middleton, Wigmore Hall review - the song recital as mixtapeTuesday, 07 May 2019
It’s the age of the mixtape. And of the Only Connect sequences round. Read more... |
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