wed 24/09/2025

Classical Reviews

Monteverdi Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Gardiner, Barbican Hall

David Nice

Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, unintentionally homaging the late Sir Colin Davis who at least in earlier days would have jumped to such a pairing, chose to celebrate his 70th birthday with the extremes of white balletic lyric poem Apollon musagète and hard-hitting blackest tragedy Oedipus Rex.

Read more...

Cooper, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice

Visiting orchestras and conductors often complain about agents’ insistence that they programme their main national dishes. The request is partly understandable: we all want to hear the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler, the Czechs in Dvořák, the Hungarians in Bartók. On this occasion, it seemed like no bad thing to welcome back the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its febrile, masterly music director Iván Fischer in a work they’ve brought to London before, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Read more...

Verdi's Requiem, Philharmonia Orchestra, Gatti, Royal Festival Hall

Edward Seckerson

It was clear that there was an Italian on the podium. Muted strings invoked an atmosphere so crepuscular that, when one involuntarily closed one’s eyes, the murmur of voices intoning the words “Requiem aeternam” seemed to come from deep inside the cathedral. The theatricality of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is inescapable but what was also inescapable under Daniele Gatti’s baton was that every phrase, instrumental and vocal, is breathed as a singer might breathe it.

Read more...

Lamsma, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican Hall/ Mei Yi Foo, Kings Place

David Nice

Brave old world, that has so much unheard music in it.

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Berlioz, Mythos Accordion Duo

graham Rickson

 

Bach: Cantatas for Ascension Day The Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/John Eliot Gardiner (SDG)

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Rachmaninov, Strauss, Sir John Barbirolli

graham Rickson

 

Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4, Paganini Rhapsody Valentina Lisitsa, London Symphony Orchestra/Michael Francis (Decca)

Read more...

City of London Sinfonia, Layton, Southwark Cathedral

David Nice

Read more...

Vienna Philharmonic, Tilson Thomas, Royal Festival Hall

Edward Seckerson

When Schoenberg made his steroidal orchestration of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet he saw and heard what many don’t - that Brahms was more of a radical than the music world was ready to acknowledge, that he was not the conservative in the shadow of Wagner that commentators at the time felt the need to brand him.

Read more...

George Benjamin, CBSO Centre, Birmingham

stephen Walsh

“A book,” says the Boy-Illuminator in George Benjamin’s latest opera Written on Skin, “needs long days of light.” He speaks for Benjamin himself, a composer who, for all his fabulous musical mind and ear, has never found composition easy and has often struggled to produce work of any kind that satisfies his own meticulous standards.

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Goossens, Mackintosh, Stravinsky

graham Rickson

 

Goossens: Orchestral works vol.2 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (Chandos)

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Slow Horses, Series 5, Apple TV+ review - terror, trauma and...

Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (...

Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manc...

The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester...

Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities

“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused...

Kerry Godliman, G-Live review - she's livid but deliver...

Kerry Godliman is livid, she tells us. Spider webs catching in her hair, the state of the world, her teenage children; you name it,...

Mark Hussey: Mrs Dalloway - Biography of a Novel review - ec...

Writing in her diary just over 100 years ago on 19th June 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote: “In this...

Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing...

Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very...

Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fle...

Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša ...

The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre review - evasive fantasy, bl...

Why are the Irish such good storytellers? The historical perspective is that the oral tradition goes way, way back, allied to the gift of the gab...