wed 22/10/2025

Classical Reviews

Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore Hall/Joseph Reuben, Petersham House

alexandra Coghlan

Old instruments have found young champions this week in two very different concerts and contexts. In the Wigmore Hall, Mahan Esfahani continued his persuasive rehabilitation of the harpsichord, showcasing not only the expressive range of the instrument itself but – more unusually – its repertoire, in music from Byrd to Ligeti.

Read more...

Bostridge, Britten Sinfonia, Barbican Hall

Kimon Daltas

The Barbican Hall’s house lights faded to black, with just the soft glow of music stand lamps on stage as the Britten Sinfonia filed on and eased into the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Directed from leader’s desk by Jacqueline Shave, the orchestra gave an exquisite account of the piece, the chamber aesthetic and necessary communication between players somehow helping to draw the audience in.

Read more...

Power, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Wilson, Barbican Hall

David Nice

Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and Broadway to another enthusiasm, tuneful British music. Yet who merits them better than he?

Read more...

Uchida, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, Birmingham

stephen Walsh

“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Blake asked the tiger. One might have asked the same question of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, with Mozart’s G major Piano Concerto, K.453, as the lamb, in this hyper-diverse Birmingham concert.

Read more...

The Rest is Noise: LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

Edward Seckerson

Vladimir Jurowski deemed this the most challenging of any programme in the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival and proceeded to tell us precisely why. That his little preamble lasted almost twice as long as the first piece - Webern’s Variations for Orchestra Op.30 - was an indicator of just how scientific the thinking behind his programme was. Jurowski instinctively understands how and why works impact on each other in the way they do.

Read more...

Mangan, Royal Academy Opera Students, BBCSO, Denève, Barbican Hall

David Nice

Highly sexed cockerels and cats, a lovesick lion and a ballet of frogs might not seem like a recipe, or rather a menagerie, for profundity. Yet in two ravishing French man (or child)-meets-beast fables for the stage, Poulenc and Ravel are quite capable of tearing at our heartstrings. That they did so unremittingly last night was very largely due to the supernaturally beautiful sounds master conjuror Stéphane Denève drew from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Read more...

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...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
The Diplomat, Season 3, Netflix review - Ambassador Kate Wyl...

The return of this entertaining political drama is always welcome, though its soap-tinged mix of transatlantic politics and volatile personal...

Gilbert & George, 21st Century Pictures, Hayward Gallery...

There was a time when Gilbert & George made provocative pictures that probed the body politic for sore points that others preferred to ignore...

The Perfect Neighbor, Netflix review - Florida found-footage...

Another day, another shooting: this is Florida, USA, where the "Stand Your...

Bryony Kimmings, Soho Theatre Walthamstow review - captivati...

Bryony Kimmings’ new show – her first in five years – was created to celebrate the opening of Soho Walthamstow, the previously...

Blu-ray: Le Quai des Brumes

From its opening scene, Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows,1938) feels like a reverie, a period of sustained waiting, during...

La bohème, Opera North review - still young at 32

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Bohème for Opera North is...

Shibe, LSO, Adès, Barbican review - gaudy and glorious new m...

Many orchestral concerts leaven two or three established classics with something new or unusual. The LSO reversed that formula...

Frankenstein review - the Prometheus of the charnel house

Guillermo del Toro strains every sinew to bring his dream film to life, steeping it in religious symbolism and the history of art, cannily...