mon 28/07/2025

Classical Reviews

Hardenberger, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Nelsons, RFH review - new songs for an old glory

Boyd Tonkin

During his quarter-century in charge of the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the late Kurt Masur nobly held out a musical hand of friendship and collaboration from the other side of the Iron Curtain.

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Two-Piano Marathon, Kings Place review - dazzling duos, deep waters

David Nice

You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly planned by Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen, and the baton passed seamlessly from two pairs of hands to the next.

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BBC Philharmonic, Wellber, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - new conductor’s debut

Robert Beale

Two days after announcing his appointment as their next chief conductor (he takes the reins officially next summer, in time for the Proms), by remarkable good fortune the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic was able to present Omer Meir Wellber as the conductor of their second Bridgewater Hall series concert.

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Anderson & Roe, RLPO, Tali, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool review - measured fire

Glyn Môn Hughes

There must be something of a beauty parade going on in Liverpool now that Vasily Petrenko has called time on his tenure at Philharmonic Hall.  After all, someone will need to step into his shoes from 2021 after he departs for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was refreshing, therefore, to welcome Anu Tali to conduct the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, making her debut with the orchestra.

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Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier - Book 2, Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review – high drama in 24 short acts

Boyd Tonkin

Bach specialists like to explain that the second book of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed around 1740 and thus almost two decades after the first, draws on more of the fancy and daring “modern” music of its time than its more traditional predecessor. Yes, but there’s modern and there’s modern.

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Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen, Kings Place review - one plus one equals a hundred

Jessica Duchen

We could probably spend all day pondering what makes a great musical partnership. Is it long experience, special sensitivity, a shared sense of humour? We’d get nowhere, though because there is, genuinely, something about it that can't be explained. It’s like a good marriage: it just works, and if you could analyse precisely why, there’d likely be something wrong.

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Gerald Finley, Julius Drake, Middle Temple Hall review - sublimity in 18 serious songs

David Nice

Earth stood hard as iron in parts of this awe-inspiring recital from a true song partnership, but theirs was an autumnal odyssey, not a winter journey.

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Uchida, Connolly, Skelton, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – songs of farewell

Peter Quantrill

Not all composers require the finger of mortality pointing at them to develop what becomes a late style. Charges of detachment and even indifference have been levelled at the B flat major Piano Concerto K595 which Mozart completed early in the year of his death, but Mitsuko Uchida’s playing of it on Saturday night was as refined, as weightless and translucent as her trademark silk tops.

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Psappha, Kok / Kempf, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - new and old

Robert Beale

The Stoller Hall, the modest-size auditorium inside Chetham’s School of Music, is really proving itself to be the venue Manchester has long needed this season. Two concerts on successive days, each the first of a series and both making something of a statement, proved that.

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Lammermuir Festival 2018 review - a bigger buzz

David Kettle

There’s always been something of a buzz in the air at East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival. It’s the feeling that it’s somehow a special privilege to discover its performances – whether they’re from international names or emerging artists, challenging, provocative and illuminating by turns – across the region’s exquisite and little-known churchs, halls, theatres and other venues.

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