Classical Reviews
Gromes, Hallé, Chauhan, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - new concerto and music of triumphFriday, 28 February 2025![]()
A cello concerto received its UK premiere in Manchester last night – almost 100 years after it was written. It’s by Maria Herz, a German-Jewish composer who had to leave her native land in the 1930s and whose work has remained almost unknown until quite recently. Raphaela Gromes has championed this concerto, giving its German premiere last year, and she brought it to Britain with the Hallé and Alpesh Chauhan (main picture). Read more... |
Helen Charlston, Sholto Kynoch, Temple Church review - fine singing, powerful stage presenceThursday, 27 February 2025![]()
Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston just gets better and better, both as singer and as actor. Last night’s recital at Temple Church had an unusual and wide-ranging programme – consisting of a first half hopping through the centuries, followed by a complete performance of Schumann’s “Kerner-Lieder” cycle. Read more... |
Ridout, 12 Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - brilliant Britten and bombastic BrahmsThursday, 27 February 2025![]()
Last night was the first time I had heard the 12 Ensemble, a string group currently Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall, and I was very impressed, both by the standard of the playing and the enterprising programming. This gave regular audience-members a little of what they’re used to (a chunk of Brahms) and a decent portion of what they’re not. Read more... |
Argerich, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Papadopoulos, Barbican review - the great pianist as life and soulTuesday, 25 February 2025![]()
At the age of 83, Martha Argerich contains more personality in her little finger than many people do in their entire bodies. Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musicianTuesday, 25 February 2025![]()
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent pianist of her generation and accorded “national treasure” status as a result of the wartime lunchtime concert series at London’s National Gallery, which she singlehandedly masterminded through 1,698 concerts between 1939 and 1946. Read more... |
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Morlot, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - blasts of Boulez, magical RavelMonday, 24 February 2025![]()
The second of the Philharmonic’s Boulez-Ravel celebrations (birth centenary of the former, 150th of the latter) brought Bertrand Chamayou back: after his performance of the G major piano concerto in January, this time it was as soloist in the Concerto for the Left Hand, with Ludovic Morlot on the podium. Read more... |
Bach's Mass in B minor, The English Concert, Bezuidenhout, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - solemnity and splendourFriday, 21 February 2025![]()
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book of the Leipzig cantor’s choral and orchestral art. Its complex patchwork of manuscripts dating from different decades only came together for a full public performance in 1859: the year in which Wagner completed Tristan und Isolde. Read more... |
Sidorova, Philharmonia, Alsop, Royal Festival Hall review - ladies of the danceSaturday, 15 February 2025![]()
George Gershwin called one of his early classic songs, first created by Fred and Adele Astaire, “Fascinating Rhythm”. It was that mesmeric pull that propelled last night’s Royal Festival Hall Concert from the Philharmonia and its principal guest conductor, Marin Alsop. Read more... |
MacMillan's Ordo Virtutum, BBC Singers, Jeannin, Milton Court review - dramatic journey of a medieval soulFriday, 14 February 2025![]()
Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan? Admirable as it is to have extant words and music for a music-drama, morality play, call it what you will, by medieval pioneer Hildegard of Bingen, her imagining of a soul torn between virtues and Satan is inevitably one-dimensional. MacMillan finds variety and surprises in response to her text at ever turn of this 80-minute epic. Read more... |
Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a rainbow of British musicTuesday, 11 February 2025
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented poetry full justice. That “pennant universal” was reflected in two superlative soloists from South Africa and the USA, our national treasure of an Anglo-Italian conductor, an Argentinian chorus director and a raft of international names in chorus and orchestra who just happen to be UK citizens. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today

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

In 2012, an eight-hour long version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby...

There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher;...

“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events...

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...

The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...

Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our...

Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy...

Documentaries about sports stars are now a dime a dozen, but you can only be as good as your subject matter. We know Andrew Flintoff (usually...

“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up...