Classical Reviews
BBC Proms: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mäkelä review - defiantly introverted Mahler 5 gives food for thoughtSunday, 24 August 2025
Klaus Mäkelä teased out all the fragility and the sense of impending mortality in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, revealing a vision that was as intricate as it was quietly luminous. Famously Mahler almost died from an intestinal haemorrhage in the year that he started composing the work, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s sensitive, nuanced performance conveyed his heightened awareness of a world that could suddenly disappear without warning. Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Butt / D’Angelo, Muñoz, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - tedious Handel, directionless song recitalSaturday, 23 August 2025
Handel probably wrote his cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in 1707 while he was in the service of the Marquis of Ruspoli in Rome. It tells the story of the shepherdess, Clori, who has two lovers that she plays off against one another to no great effect, everything culminating in an ending that’s suspiciously neat even by Handel’s standards. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Liu, Philharmonia, Rouvali review - fine-tuned Tchaikovsky epicThursday, 21 August 2025
Pianist Bruce Liu wasn’t the only star soloist last night, though he certainly had the most notes to play. Attention was riveted by at least five Philharmonia members and their maverick principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali as percussionist in a joyful Prom. Read more... |
BBC Proms: A Mass of Life, BBCSO, Elder review - a subtle guide to Delius's Nietzschean masterpieceTuesday, 19 August 2025
For Delius – then a young man, visiting Norway in the late 1880s to walk in its mountains – his first encounter with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra was nothing less than an epiphany. Already high on the grandeur of nature in a country defined by its shimmering fjords and austere mountains, he found the text to be an intoxicating affirmation of the glories of the world in a humanistic universe. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet review - super-sized polyphonic raritiesMonday, 18 August 2025
There’s a Proms paradox that’s familiar to Early Music fans. Some works are too challenging – too big, too expensive, too uncommercial, too obscure – to do anywhere else. The trouble is, the Royal Albert Hall is the absolute last place you’d want to hear them. Read more... |
Frang, Romaniw, Liverman, LSO, Pappano, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - sunlight, salt spray, Sea SymphonySaturday, 16 August 2025
Right from the bracing brass fanfare that began this Sea Symphony, you know exactly where you were: right in the midst of the deck, with the spray in your face and the wind in your hair. Read more... |
Elschenbroich, Grynyuk / Fibonacci Quartet, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - mahogany Brahms and explosive JanáčekWednesday, 13 August 2025
Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynyuk crafted a fine programme for their EIF recital, centring around Brahms’ relationship with the Schumanns. He famously met them in 1853, when Robert Schumann declared him the next great thing in German music. The following year, however, Robert attempted suicide, launching a decline that lasted until his death. Brahms stayed close to Clara until her death in 1896, in response to which he wrote the Vier ernste Gesänge. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Akhmetshina, LPO, Gardner review - liquid luxuriesTuesday, 12 August 2025
Water surged through this Prom from first spray to last drop. But there was nothing damp or diluted about Edward Gardner’s helmsmanship as he steered the London Philharmonic Orchestra through a succession of liquid rhapsodies: three from the early 20th century; one from 1993. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Kovachevitsa - top Bulgarians and friends make peerless music in a remote villageTuesday, 12 August 2025
Performers and public alike always treasure a beautiful and, in this case, remote setting for a music festival. But people matter as much as sense of place. When the players work together in various combinations for the duration, and tell you this is the highlight of their musical year, you know the achievement is utopian. And that was certainly the case with eight dynamic Bulgarian instrumentalists and three visitors new to the magic of Kovachevitsa. Read more... |
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - mania and menuetsMonday, 11 August 2025
Fresh from their triumph at the Proms, the Budapest Festival Orchestra arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival with a programme that centred on dance, and culminated in as fine a performance of Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin (the complete score, not the suite) as you’d hope to hear. This is music that the Budapest players have in their blood, and you could tell that in the way they conjured up sound that managed to be grimy and nasty but lush at the same time. Read more... |
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