mon 06/10/2025

Classical Reviews

Bavouzet, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - playing the long game in Sibelius

Peter Quantrill

Perhaps Sibelius did the right thing, signing off Tapiola in 1926 and then all but closing his account, spending the next three decades sitting and drinking.

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Orpheus Caledonius, Brighton Early Music Festival review - a thrilling meeting of musical clans

alexandra Coghlan

In 1725 a collection of some 50 songs was published by one William Thomson. You might not know his name, or even the names of the songs, but given the first bar of most I’m betting you could hum them from beginning to end. The work?

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October, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - Eisenstein with steel score

David Nice

Forget the ersatz experience of Sergey Eisenstein's mighty silent films accompanied by slabs of Shostakovich symphonies composed years later. This collaboration between the London Symphony Orchestra and Kino Klassika is as close as we can ever come to hearing the massive score composed by Austrian-born Edmund Meisel for the greatest of the master's 1920s films.

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Crowe, The English Concert, Bicket, Milton Court review - Mozartian prima-donna perfection

David Nice

Singing students from the Guildhall School should have been issued with a three-line whip to fill the inexplicably half-empty Milton Court concert hall for last night's charmer. After all, every musician, and not just sopranos, should know that this is how it ought to be done. True, an effervescent personality like Lucy Crowe's can't be simulated. But every other respect of her stunningly sung and varied Mozart...

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Total Immersion: Julian Anderson, Barbican review - BBC ensembles showcase leading British composer

Bernard Hughes

Julian Anderson’s 50th birthday this year was the prompt for the latest of the BBC’s Total Immersion days, devoted to the work of a single contemporary composer.

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Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review – Bach Partitas shine and sing

Bernard Hughes

On paper this was a fairly austere piece of programming. No variety in composer, genre or style, just four Bach Partitas in a row, works of similar approach, length and technique. And yet in performance, in the hands of Angela Hewitt, there was sufficient variety, not to mention poetry, humanity and wit, to make for a completely satisfying recital.

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Ensemble InterContemporain, Pintscher, RFH review - a visit from the gentle ghost of Boulez

Peter Quantrill

The Royal Festival Hall rather belied its name for a visit to London on Saturday of France’s premier new-music ensemble. It can’t be helped that the more intimate space of the Queen Elizabeth Hall next door is presently closed for renovation, but with the balcony and back of the stalls both empty and unlit, the place presented a more dismal aspect than usual.

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Jonas Kaufmann: Tenor for the Ages, BBC Four review - a musical megastar with sword and shortbread

Jessica Duchen

Now we know who sent Jonas Kaufmann the Union Jack boxer shorts for the Last Night of the Proms. Whether the sender’s identity is the bigger surprise, or the hint of ambiguity over whether the "Greatest Tenor in the World" had previously heard of one of Britain’s favourite baritones – well, you decide. And no, we don’t learn who threw the knickers at him from the arena.

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BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican review - commanding vistas of earth and sea

Gavin Dixon

Dances of earth and songs of sea – the BBC Symphony Orchestra's latest programme offered an inspired coupling, where similar inspirations balanced contrasting styles.

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Uchida, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - Berlioz steals the show

David Nice

"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full).

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