Classical Reviews
Alice Coote, Christian Blackshaw, Wigmore Hall review – deep feeling and high dramaSaturday, 22 December 2018
In the recital world, so it sometimes seems, no good deed ever goes unpunished. Like Ian Bostridge (another singer who tries to reinvigorate an often rigid format), Alice Coote often has to fend off brickbats whenever she inject the drama of new ideas into the hallowed rituals of the concert hall. Read more... |
L'enfance du Christ, BBCSO, Gardner, Barbican review - Berlioz's kindest wonderTuesday, 18 December 2018
Like the fountains that sprang up in the desert during the Holy Family's flight into Egypt - according to a charming episode in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew - Berlioz's new-found creativity in the 1850s flowed from a couple of bars of organ music he inscribed in a friend's visitors book. Read more... |
Mahan Esfahani / Richard Goode, Wigmore Hall review - clarity and contrast from two keyboard mastersTuesday, 18 December 2018
Two successive nights, two contrasted solo keyboard recitals at the Wigmore Hall: not great for the knees but marvellous for the soul. Read more... |
Epiphoni Consort, Reader, St Paul's Covent Garden review - historical drama with seasonal spiritMonday, 17 December 2018
Like a supermarket "Christmas Dinner" sandwich, cramming the delights of a full festive lunch into every bite, Epiphoni Consort’s The Christmas Truce was at once historical play, choral concert and carol service, and so wonderfully enjoyable I didn’t want it to end. Read more... |
Thomas Adès, Wigmore Hall review - playful and erratic JanáčekTuesday, 11 December 2018
Janáček has been an abiding passion for Thomas Adès. As both composer and performer, Adès revels in the whimsical and the absurd, and he finds both in Janáček’s piano works. Read more... |
The Swingles, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – austere Stravinsky, luminous BerioMonday, 10 December 2018
The London Philharmonic’s year-long Stravinsky festival, Changing Faces, concluded here in spectacular style, with a tribute to “The Swingling Sixties”. Vladimir Jurowski, the soon to be leaving – and soon to be much-missed, Principal Conductor of the LPO, devised an adventurous and innovative programme, pairing Stravinsky’s late masterpiece Threni with the contemporaneous Sinfonia of Berio. Read more... |
Mitsuko Uchida, Royal Festival Hall review - conviction and graceSaturday, 08 December 2018
Mitsuko Uchida continues her world tour of Schubert sonatas with two concerts for the home crowd, this the second of her appearances at the Festival Hall. Read more... |
Sophie Bevan, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - an Alpine blazeFriday, 07 December 2018
With eyes swivelled towards who'll take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor in 2021, two of the strongest possibilities are to be found within the orchestra's masthead of associates. Read more... |
Bostridge, Pappano, Barbican review - a tough but thrilling march across the battlefieldThursday, 06 December 2018
Seldom has an encore felt so welcome. With Sir Antonio Pappano as his accompanist at the Barbican, Ian Bostridge tugged us through the mill of industrialised slaughter and the psychic devastation it leaves in an ambitious programme of song sequences that evoked “war, and the pity of war”. Read more... |
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – three iconic worksFriday, 30 November 2018
At first sight, performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – premiered in 1913 and sometimes seen as presaging the whole world of modernism – in the centenary year of the 1918 Armistice might seem to be lagging behind in timing (if centenaries float your boat). Read more... |
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