thu 24/07/2025

Classical Reviews

Christine Brewer, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Christine Brewer: Dusting off some classics and bringing the great divas back to life

Christine Brewer singing American song – it’s like Judi Dench in Shakespeare, or an Aaron Sorkin screenplay: it just doesn’t get any better. Forcing the restrained acoustic of the Wigmore to ring as though it were St Paul’s, and persuading a white-haired Friday-night crowd to whoop and clap between numbers until cut off by the next piano introduction, it’s hard to say whether Brewer’s voice or personality carries greater weight. Every bit the equal of the “glad, great-throated nightingale”...

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Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel, Barbican Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

There had been murmurings that his star had dimmed. That Gustavo Dudamel's partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (greeted with such fanfare in 2009) had yet to set the West Coast on fire. Had this Icarus flown too high? Would their debut visit to the Barbican last night resemble Breughel's fall, Latino legs flailing in an orchestral sea? Not a bit of it.

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Bronfman, Philharmonia, Salonen, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice

"You have to start somewhere," remarked Debussy drily at the 1910 premiere of young Stravinsky's Firebird ballet. Even so, that was far more of a somewhere than the ultra-nationalistic Hungarian tone poem Kossuth, first major orchestral flourish of Béla Bartók, the Russian's senior by one year. In choosing it to launch Infernal Dance, the Philharmonia's 2011 celebration not of Stravinsky (as the title weirdly implies) but Bartók, principal conductor Esa-Pekka...

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Steven Isserlis, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Steven Isserlis: On characteristically head-banging, hand-jiving form

No self-mutilation or incest, but plenty of daddy issues at the Wigmore Hall last night in a musical glance through the Bach family album. Carefully keeping Johann Sebastian out of the way (presumably lest he show everyone else up and spoil the fun), Richard Egarr guided us through the work of his four composer sons. Spread across Europe from London to Hamburg and Bologna, the differing influences, fashions and character of each becomes quickly evident. Just a shame that – even in his...

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Markovich, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

The great thing about the paucity of Mahler compositions is that, when anniversary time comes, his late-Romantic buddies get to join in. And some of them, like Alexander Zemlinsky in his ravishing Lyric Symphony - being given a rare outing by the London Philharmonic Orchestra last night - sometimes seem to be better at Mahler than Mahler.

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LPO, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall

alexandra Coghlan Yannick Nézet-Séguin: Too much talent to deliver quite so poor a performance

A programme of French music under the baton of the LPO’s talented young principal guest conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin should be a treat. Nézet-Séguin’s affinity for French textures and gestures has already been amply proved, as has the orchestra’s own aptitude for them, yet whatever was happening to the Fauré Requiem last night at the Royal Festival Hall was neither polished nor delightful. To attribute it simply to a bad day might be the kindest thing, but when you take into account the...

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Army of Generals, Hazlewood, St George's Bristol

mark Kidel Charles Hazlewood's Army of Generals: Classical music for the age of mass media

An “Army of Generals” suggests a kind of supergroup, a fighting force made up of leaders rather than followers. If Charles Hazlewood’s band, which has just started a residency at Bristol’s St George's, is such a host, then he presumably is the Generalissimo, primus inter pares, whose mastery is exercised with a showman's display of almost innocent ego.

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Juan Diego Flórez, Royal Festival Hall

alexandra Coghlan

We’ve all seen singers go wrong. Forgetting words, missing entries, skipping verses – it happens often enough, and is generally cause for little more than some awkward laughter and a second attempt. Never, however, have I seen a wrong entry (as ill-luck would decree, in the only sacred work of the programme) greeted with a resonant expostulation of “Oh, shit” from the performer, followed by minor audience uproar and many apologies. It wasn’t the finest moment of the evening for Juan Diego...

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BBC Diverse Orchestras 2011: The Music of North Africa, The Tabernacle

David Nice The Fez Andalusian Orchestra making waves in Notting Hill

Now I know why the BBC Symphony Orchestra slunk so easily into Piazzolla tango mode last Friday: they'd danced it under Latin American instruction four years ago. It's all part of their education department's annual Diverse Orchestras week, where performers from another culture come to open the players'...

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Khachatryan, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican Hall

Edward Seckerson

Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic Winter Daydreams thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak mid-winter was, by the time he penned his Second Violin Concerto, very much a one-way ticket. Two revealing performances, one remarkable young violinist.

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