Classical Reviews
Prom 14: Lisiecki, BBCSO, Chan - fine textures and subtle delightsWednesday, 26 July 2023
One of the undoubted highlights of Prom 14 was unprogrammed – following his commanding performance of Beethoven’s third piano concerto, Jan Lisiecki returned to the stage to give an encore of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, Opus 9 No 2. Read more... |
theartsdesk at The Three Choirs Festival - Elgar, Vaughan Williams and HammondTuesday, 25 July 2023
The Three Choirs is (are?) off again, for the 295th time, but with a very different look, even from the festivals of my youth, never mind 1715, or whenever the first one was held (there seems to be some doubt about it). Read more... |
Prom 7: Urioste, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Otaka review – old friends, new worldsThursday, 20 July 2023
A full house, and television cameras: rarer events at the Proms than they used to be (or should be). Both lent a sense of occasion to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s visit to the Royal Albert Hall with their Conductor Laureate, Tadaaki Otaka. The cameras (for a BBC Four broadcast on Friday) had descended not for Cardiff’s long-serving Japanese stalwart – who first led BBC NOW in 1987 – but for Elena Urioste’s performance of the Violin Concerto by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Read more... |
Prom 6: Hough, BBC Philharmonic, Mark Wigglesworth review - poetry and powerWednesday, 19 July 2023
This Prom by the BBC Philharmonic was billed as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Royal Northern College of Music, in distant Manchester. Read more... |
Prom 4: Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kuusisto review - Pekka Kuusisto's charisma shrinks the Royal Albert HallMonday, 17 July 2023
Pekka Kuusisto, making his Proms debut as conductor in the first half of this concert, and then as violinist/conductor/ringmaster/energiser in the second, brought lightness, playfulness, and a Finnish sense for the absurd to the Albert Hall. He is an absolutely live-wire performer and has a hugely charismatic musical presence. He radiates joy in his craft and also unfailingly communicates his appreciation for those around him. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival - invisible cities and possible dreamsMonday, 17 July 2023
Came for the music, returned for the theatre. I oversimplify: Riccardo Muti’s Roads of Friendship events, meetings of his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra with players from other places – since 1997, they have included Sarajevo, Lebanon, Kenya, Iran and this year Jordan – will always be the big cornerstones of the Ravenna Festival. Read more... |
First Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Stasevska review - fire and elan mark an evening celebrating freedomSaturday, 15 July 2023
Even before the Just Stop Oil protesters hit the stage after the interval, this was destined to be one of the most politically charged Proms the Royal Albert Hall has witnessed for a while. The rousing cheer that greeted the BBC Singers was hopefully all the beleaguered BBC bosses needed to realise – after the ill-advised attempt to abolish them in March – what a key part of our music culture they remain today. Read more... |
Ligeti Day; Kolesnikov/Tsoy, Aldeburgh Festival review - 14 musicians, 16 premieres and 100 metronomesMonday, 26 June 2023
To give the first performance of a dazzling fantasia in the context of a rangy sunny-evening-to-night concert, as pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy did in glorious Blythburgh Church, merits a gold medal in piano-duo enterprise. To premiere 15 new works in a single programme and adapt perfectly to the various styles, the Ligeti Quartet’s crowning glory of three events celebrating their namesake’s centenary, is simply superhuman. Read more... |
Hahn, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall review - Americana old and newWednesday, 21 June 2023
Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall Hilary Hahn brought her residency to an end with a collaboration with the exciting Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, a notably youthful and ethnically diverse group, who brought with them a notably more youthful and ethnically diverse crowd than the hall usually entertains. Read more... |
Sinfonia of London, Wilson; Kolesnikov/Tsoy; Bozzini Quartet; Phantasm, Aldeburgh Festival review - new sounds for oldTuesday, 20 June 2023
You don’t expect to visit the Britten-Pears shrine in Suffolk and come back raving about Edward Elgar. Yes, Elgar. On Sunday evening, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London brought the composer’s Second Symphony to Snape Maltings: that marshland temple to every anti-Elgarian current in post-war British music. Read more... |
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