Classical Reviews
Kantorow, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review – a new brilliance on the London concert sceneMonday, 07 February 2022
Boléro and Scheherazade may be popular Sunday afternoon fare, but both are masterpieces and need the most sophisticated handling. High hopes that the new principal conductor the Philharmonia players seem to love so much, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, would do Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov justice were exceeded in a dream of a concert. Read more... |
Path of Miracles, Elysian Singers, St Pancras Church review – an ambitious musical pilgrimageMonday, 07 February 2022
Path of Miracles is a serious, hefty 65-minute choral work about the traditional Catholic pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela by – and there is a slight cognitive dissonance here – Joby Talbot, the composer of, among other things, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film. Read more... |
Stikhina, Kowaljow, LSO, Noseda, Barbican review - dramatic songs of death, electrifying dances of lifeFriday, 04 February 2022
“This symphony comprises 11 songs about death and lasts about one hour,” the conductor Mark Wigglesworth declared before a second New York performance of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth – people had left in droves during the first – only to see a swathe of his audience look anxiously at their watches. Read more... |
Fischer, LPO, Søndergård, RFH review - poised Mozart, lean and hungry StraussThursday, 03 February 2022
Mozart’s early violin concertos are precociously well-tailored and full of fun ideas, but are they “teenage masterpieces”, as Julia Fischer asserts? That special honour goes to the likes of Mendelssohn’s Octet and the most famous of Schubert’s 1815 songs. Read more... |
Bournemouth SO, Karabits, Lighthouse, Poole review - go east!Tuesday, 25 January 2022
Focusing on music composed in the former countries of the old Soviet Union, the BSO’s latest concert in Kirill Karabits’ ongoing enterprising series Voices from the East featured the UK premiere of the Second Symphony by Chary Nurymov (1940-1993), a composer much lauded in his native Turkmenistan. Read more... |
Total Immersion: Music for the End of Time review - miracles from the house of the deadMonday, 24 January 2022
History’s most grotesque act of cynicism has to be the model ghetto the Nazis mocked up for the cameras in Terezin/Theresienstadt in October 1944, several days before transporting all the musicians and smartly-dressed attendees present at the concert included in the film to Auschwitz. Read more... |
LPO, Canellakis, Royal Festival Hall review - ecstatic sonorities at full peltMonday, 24 January 2022
This remarkable evening should really have been more remarkable still. The unfortunate pianist Cédric Tiberghien took an official pre-travel Covid test that obliged him to drop out at 5pm – even though, as he tweeted in frustration, three subsequent lateral flow tests came out negative. Such is concert life in the Covid era. Read more... |
Sandrine Piau, David Kadouch, Wigmore Hall review - the joy is in the detailTuesday, 18 January 2022
“It mustn’t be a surface thing. You have to put in the work,” Janet Baker once said. Sandrine Piau’s Wigmore recital of German song followed by French song was the perfect demonstration of that credo in action. Read more... |
Liebeck, Bournemouth SO, Hasan, Lighthouse, Poole review - evergreen gifts of melodyMonday, 17 January 2022
Having conducted two Discovery programmes with the LSO after being a finalist in the 2016 Donatella Flick competition, London-born Kerem Hasan went on to win the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award in 2017. Read more... |
Lise Davidsen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Barbican review - perfect Grieg, impressive Strauss and WagnerFriday, 14 January 2022
After a too-much-too-soon debut disc, Lisa Davidsen has just rolled out the gold on CD with her great fellow Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes in songs by their compatriot Grieg. Read more... |
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