sat 19/07/2025

Classical Reviews

La Pasión según San Marcos / Carmen, Opéra Comique, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - united in story and song

Miranda Heggie

Trouble. Overly honest. Too opinionated. Ultimately get killed for refusing to let go of their principles and kowtowing to the status quo. 

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Prom 19, Rummukainen, Dandy, BBCSO, Oramo review - inward reflections and choral transcendence

David Nice

How do you get five thousand plus people into the Albert Hall to hear two Sanskrit-based rarities by British-born composers? Simple: place the Elgar Cello Concerto in between them. Here was another daring Prom programme that totally worked, not least since cellist Senja Rummukainen, compatriot of the BBC Symphony Orchestra much-loved Finnish chief conductor Sakari Oramo, proved as sensitive as him and his players to the elusive core of what's surprisingly become a popular classic.

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Prom 17, Kozhukhin, RPO, Petrenko review - four tripartite masterpieces

David Nice

Under its master music director, the once-torpid Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has given us some of the most brilliant concerts of the 2023-4 season. Their Prom together changed course from the Elgar/Rachmaninov theme and dared even more, placing together four works in three parts each – two with atmospheric outer sections flanking vivid ceremonials (Ives, Debussy), two placing the lyricism at the dead centre (Ravel, Tchaikovsky).

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Prom 10, Van der Heijden, BBCSSO, Ryan Wigglesworth review - an engaging and esoteric delight

Rachel Halliburton

What is Englishness? Over the last century the answer has changed substantially. Yet last night’s Prom, which – according to the programme – set itself the task of celebrating “all things English” had a very particular answer.

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Prom 6, Verdi's Requiem, BBCNOW, Bancroft review - running the emotional gamut

David Nice

Returning after ten months to the unique vasts of Albert’s colosseum, especially for a Verdi Requiem as powerful as this and a packed hall, felt like a rebirth. There was immediate purging in the focused whispers of the first “Requiem aeternam”s, BBC National Orchestra of Wales Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft instilling a confidence you knew would last the evening, and instant thrills in the clarion “Kyrie”s of all four world-class soloists.

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Prom 5, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bancroft review - a luxury orchestral cruise

Boyd Tonkin

This looked like a classic Prom in the grand old BBC tradition: two big but lesser-known pieces by pivotal figures (Schoenberg and Zemlinsky) played by a major non-metropolitan ensemble, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And so it proved, with powerful, refined and meatily satisfying versions of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid conducted by the NOW’s chief, Ryan Bancroft.

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First Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Chan review - from the sublime to the mischievously meticulous

Rachel Halliburton

The first night of the BBC’s 2024 Proms season was illuminated by the blazing brilliance of Isata Kanneh-Mason’s performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto and the world premiere of Ben Nobuto’s witty video-game-inspired Hallelujah Sim. Hong Kong born conductor Elim Chan presided over a vibrant, joyful evening in which apparent crowd-pleasers like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony were balanced by pieces that ranged from the sublime to the mischievously meticulous.

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theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2024 - youth, experience and old mastery on the highest level

David Nice

"The world meets in Pärnu", slogan for the 14th festival in Estonia's summer seaside capital, has held good ever since Paavo Järvi gathered native musicians and key players from the international teams he inspires to form what's now the Estonian Festival Orchestra. Buzz about the youngsters formerly serving just the conductors’ course is new; 2024's Järvi Academy Youth Symphony Orchestra embraces 30 countries.

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NMC Recordings at 35, Dutch Church, London review - a fitting celebration

Bernard Hughes

NMC Recordings has spent 35 years promoting contemporary music by British composers, and this commitment to both emerging and established voices was represented at this birthday concert in London last night, part of the Spitalfields Festival. From their emergence in 1989 in a different musical and technological world (“NMC” standing for “New Music Cassettes”) my early days of CD buying were guided by NMC’s developing catalogue and they are still a go-to for finding interesting new things.

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Concert Theatre DSCH, Norwegian CO, QEH review - visually stunning, viscerally thrilling Shostakovich

Rachel Halliburton

This luminously persuasive, radically inventive performance of Shostakovich’s music begins – quite literally – at the end. Beneath a slowly revolving monochrome moon, a lone musician delivers a plangent rendition of the Moderato and Allegretto from the final viola sonata the composer wrote before dying of cancer in 1975.

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