wed 19/02/2025

Classical Reviews

The Bach Dynasty, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore Hall

Jonathan Wikeley Sexing up the Bach family (a little bit): Richard Egarr

No, not some crazy remake of an Eighties soap featuring various members of the Bach family (though I wouldn’t put it past certain channel programmers to come up with the idea), but the Academy of Ancient Music’s (AAM) new series of concerts, which in a nutshell gives them the chance to perform lots of Johann Sebastian, with two bookend concerts covering the befores and the afters, as it were. Bound to get the crowds in and looks nice on the posters.

Read more...

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

David Nice

From primeval baying to a very human song in excelsis, Mahler's Third Symphony cries out for Olympian interpretation. That I've found in recent years with Abbado in Lucerne and the Albert Hall, Bělohlávek at the Barbican and Salonen on the South Bank. Since...

Read more...

Llŷr Williams, Wigmore Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Do paws get any mightier than Llŷr Williams's? When not crashing down onto the Wigmore Hall Steinway like a ton of singing bricks, they were digging deep, like strong, nifty moles, foraging for the contrapuntal melodies that lay beneath the topsoil. Williams was made to tackle the beefy German classics on this programme.

Read more...

The Last Night of the Proms, Fleming, Rysanov, BBCSO, Bělohlávek

Ismene Brown

It must have been with a leaden heart that the BBC Proms planning team realised that 2010's Last Night would fall plumb on 9/11. How to reconcile all the traditional Brit triumphalism and singing of Jerusalem with the rather more contemporary need to reconcile all, whether out of Jerusalem or not?

Read more...

The Last Night of the Proms, BBC One: The Twitter Review

Jasper Rees

Part 2 @bbcproms. The madness begins. Ms Derham has not switched gowns in the interval. No sign of Titchmarsh, for which we must give thanks.

The "traditional" necklace of laurels for Sir Henry Wood's bust. Wonder if he'd welcome his head being polished by a pink rag.

How do they pick these pieces? Apols but the Marche joyeuse did not fill this tweeter with joy. On the other hand, here's Renée plus a mike.

Read more...

Russian afternoon, Rudy, Ivashkin, Kings Place

David Nice

Two years after its first festive spree of 100 events, Kings Place has become the most congenial of all London's concert-hall zones in which to hang loose. On Friday afternoon I could have trotted happily between Russian piano classics, youth jazz and storytellers.

Read more...

Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner, Royal Albert Hall

alexandra Coghlan

Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers are something of a musical enigma. Neither their true pitch nor order of movements, their origins, nor even whether they were intended as a complete sequence is known for certain, prompting scholar Denis Arnold to conclude that, “to perform it is to court disaster”. Such a grim augury however has done little to discourage musicians, and in this, their 400th anniversary year, Monteverdi’s Vespers have been ubiquitous.

Read more...

Röschmann, Collins, BBCPO, Noseda, Royal Albert Hall

David Nice

Maybe it's a truism that most instrumental music, at least before World War One, aspires to the condition of song. Few have gone farther in that respect than the composers of the three purely orchestral works in last night's Prom.

Read more...

Orchestre National de France, Gatti, Royal Albert Hall

Edward Seckerson Daniele Gatti: An evening he'll not forget

It was one of those moments that every conductor (and orchestra) dreads: “The Procession of the Sage” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is in rip-roaring full cry, percussion grinding and scratching, high trumpet screeching – but Daniele Gatti, it would seem, loses a bar somewhere and gives his Orchestre National de France a premature cut-off, leaving the entire brass section between a rock and a hard place. Stop or play on? An ignominious collapse ensues – as big a blunder as I’...

Read more...

RSNO, Denève; Ensemble Matheus, Spinosi, Royal Albert Hall

David Nice

Is that asking a lot? Probably not, considering what's already been achieved at this year's BBC Proms. Looking back on it, last night felt implausibly rich yet gloriously digestible, too, at least in retrospect. I couldn't have predicted that I would be so swept away by the jam-packed wonders that came from Jean-Christophe Spinosi's Ensemble Matheus and their soloists.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Hacks, Season 3, NOW review - acerbic showbiz comedy keeps u...

Dying is easy, comedy is hard, according to the Georgian actor Edmund Kean. Luckily, everybody involved with the much-awarded Hacks...

East Is South, Hampstead Theatre review - bewildering and un...

Our humanity is defined not only by our use of language, but also by our sense of the spiritual. Whether you are a believer or not, it’s hard to...

Album: Basia Bulat - Basia's Palace

Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats...

Josienne Clarke, Across the Evening Sky, Kings Place review...

On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the...

Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling

As Valentine’s Day crests around us, and lonely hearts come out of their winter hibernation, what better time to publish writer and journalist...

Blu-ray: Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an inanimate clay figure, brought to life when a magic word is placed inside its mouth....

Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic...

Genius doesn't always tally with equal opportunities, to paraphrase Doris Lessing. Opera houses have a duty to put on new works by women composers...

Unicorn, Garrick Theatre review - wordy and emotionless desi...

Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn,...

Vollmond, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris...

Imagine: you take your seat at the best restaurant in town, the waiter arrives with a flourish to fill your water glass, you hold it out and he...