Classical Reviews

Proms 70 and 71: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Tuesday, 08 September 2009

What exactly is the point of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies? I don't ask this with any malice or hostility, just in a tone of inquiry. It is a question that I think his new Violin Concerto, Fiddler on the Shore, raises. That is, is Davies still here to shock and annoy, or to assuage? The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Davies's baton presented the British premiere of the work last night, with Daniel Hope as the soloist, in the first of two proms that...

Prom 62 Vienna Philharmonic, Mehta

Edward Seckerson Thursday, 03 September 2009

Schumann's

Doctor Atomic, ENO

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Among the most astonishing moments in John Adams's new opera Doctor Atomic (currently running at the English National Opera) is an aria at the end of the first act. The eponymous brains behind the Manhattan Project, Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer, stands alone on stage with his new creation, a spherical A-bomb coated in wires and tubes like a patient in intensive care, and sings John Donne's holy sonnet "Batter my heart, three-person'd God".

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