Classical Reviews
Mahler 8, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - lights on highMonday, 28 April 2025
Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’s Faust finale. You’d think no visuals could match the auditory phantasmagoria, just as dance, music and design flunked the essence of Paradiso in the Royal Ballet’s The Dante Project. Mahler does compose a kind of concert opera in Part Two, though; sound, movement and image accorded well. Read more... |
Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - misalliance and magical marathonSaturday, 26 April 2025
“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events offer parallel visions, intended in the case of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé (a shared project between the LPO and Australian dance company Circa I regret missing), not so in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony: as that masterpiece begins to be freed of its Soviet-era load, William Kentridge shackles it again on his own brilliant terms. Read more... |
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Barbican review - conscience against conformismMonday, 21 April 2025
In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of Bach’s compressed gospel tragedy a “ritual”. You understand why that word claims its place. However, there’s not much consciously liturgical about the AAM’s musical approach. Read more... |
MacMillan St John Passion, Boylan, National Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Hill, NCH Dublin review - flares around a fine ChristSaturday, 19 April 2025
Never make your mind up too soon about any large-scale work by a genius. Back in 2010, I had my doubts about James MacMillan’s first Passion, hearing in the impact of Colin Davis’s Barbican performance a halfway house between the composer's shattering best and his more contrived side. Read more... |
Donohoe, RPO, Brabbins, Cadogan Hall review - rarely heard British piano concertoThursday, 17 April 2025
The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over the last few years – initially prompted by Paul Spicer’s excellent 2023 biography – I have realised this is not fair, and he’s actually a very interesting composer. Read more... |
London Choral Sinfonia, Waldron, Smith Square Hall review - contemporary choral classics alongside an ambitious premiereWednesday, 16 April 2025
The London Choral Sinfonia are a very impressive group, a professional choir who are churning out terrific recordings at a breakneck pace – I reviewed their latest release of Malcolm Arnold on theartsdesk only last week – as well as a busy schedule of live concerts and educational outreach. Read more... |
Goldberg Variations, Ólafsson, Wigmore Hall review - Bach in the shadow of BeethovenMonday, 14 April 2025
Víkingur Ólafsson had something to prove at the Wigmore Hall. And prove it he did, even if, this time, his Goldberg Variations left a few features of Bach’s inexhaustible keyboard panorama at the edge of his pianistic picture. The much-loved Icelandic chart-topper had promised Beethoven’s final three sonatas for this concert. Read more... |
Mahler's Ninth, BBC Philharmonic, Gamzou, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - vision and intensityMonday, 14 April 2025
There was a change of conductor from the one advertised for this BBC Philharmonic performance at the Bridgewater Hall – but the one who we heard from was an interpreter of extraordinary vision and intensity. Yoel Gamzou is also a composer in his own right, and a Mahler specialist, it would seem: he’s made his own completion of the Tenth Symphony, so he’s no doubt as aware of the language and creative imagination of that other composer-conductor as anyone. Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Dunedin Consort, Butt, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - life, meaning and depthSunday, 13 April 2025
I was in Germany last week, and nearly every town I went to was advertising a St Matthew or a St John Passion taking place in the week up to Easter. It says something about how deeply engrained Bach’s Passion settings are in German culture that they can muster up so many performances while, in most years, we in Scotland get only one for the whole country. Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin review - the heights rescaledSaturday, 12 April 2025
When you’ve already come as close as possible to perfection in the greatest masterpiece, why risk a repeat performance with a difference? Because Bach’s St Matthew Passion needs to be an annual fixture without routine, and because inspirational IBO director Peter Whelan can be guaranteed not only to recapture the magic but to try a few new things, and to choose new soloists with fine judgement. Read more... |
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