Classical Reviews
Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soulThursday, 20 March 2025
Imagine if Bach had set Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili’s allegory of Beauty breaking free from Pleasure with the guidance of Time and Enlightenment: he’d probably have hit the spiritual highs. The 21-year-old Handel, at least as this multifaceted performance so vigorously and poetically argued, plumps for hedonistic delights. Read more... |
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Marsalis, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sounds above substanceMonday, 17 March 2025
Few symphonies lasting over an hour hold the attention (Mahler’s can; even Messiaen’s Turangalîla feels two movements too long). Wynton Marsalis is a great man, but his Fourth, “The Jungle”, is no masterpiece, not even a symphony – a dance suite, maybe, with enough bold textures to recall wandering attentions. We needed less of this, and more of the Duke Ellington selections superbly played by the 15-strong Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the first half. Read more... |
Uproar, Rafferty, Royal Welsh College, Cardiff review - colourful new inventions inspired by LigetiSunday, 16 March 2025
There’s a lot to be said for the planning that clearly went into this concert by the Cardiff-based new music ensemble, Uproar. Starting with Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto, it added three new commissions for (more or less) the same band and a fourth, existing piece previously composed to go with the Ligeti. Read more... |
Attacca Quartet, Kings Place review - bridging the centuries in soundSunday, 16 March 2025
Memorably described by Gramophone magazine as the “new kids on the classical block…with lavish pocket money”, Apple’s London-based label Platoon is busy cementing its street cred with an ongoing concert series at Kings Place. Read more... |
Manchester Collective, RNCM review - exploring new territorySaturday, 15 March 2025
Manchester Collective, now very much a part of the establishment world of new music, are still enlarging their territory. For this set, performed in Leeds and Manchester and repeated in Liverpool, Nottingham and the Southbank Centre, they are revisiting some ground but have a world premiere, commissioned by themselves, to offer too. Read more... |
Bavouzet, BBCSO, Stasevska, Barbican review - ardent souls in mythic magicThursday, 13 March 2025
Not to be overshadowed by the adrenalin charges of the Budapest Festival Orchestra the previous evening, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska gave a supercharged triple whammy of masterpieces. They even had a pianist to match the Budapesters’ Igor Levit, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. He seemed as delighted with Stasevska and the players as they were with him; the post-performance embraces spoke volumes about communicative kindred spirits. Read more... |
Levit, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, RFH review - anger unleashed, fantasy finessed in ProkofievWednesday, 12 March 2025
A showstopper for starters followed by dark depths, a quirky compilation after the interval: it’s what you might expect from Iván Fischer and his 42-year-old Budapest Festival Orchestra. All Prokofiev, too: the sort of thing we used to get from Valery Gergiev and visiting Petersburgers. Yet while Gergiev’s alliance with Putin means he’ll not be here again, Fischer has balanced criticising Orbán and keeping his Hungarian orchestra on the road. Read more... |
A Form of Exile: Edward Said and Late Style, CLS, Wood, QEH review - baggy ferment of ideas and soundsMonday, 10 March 2025
You could plan an entire concert season around the theme of “late style”, its paradoxes and variations. For this one-off, many of us expected a concentrated mesh of Edward Said’s only-connect observations with a well-balanced musical programme, something along the lines of the recent 90-minute cloud tapestry the City of London Sinfonia wove with atmospheric scientist Simon Clark (Rachel Halliburton, whom I accompanied, loved it, as did I). Read more... |
BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an International Women's Day specialMonday, 10 March 2025
Anja Bihlmaier returned to the BBC Philharmonic – for the first time in the Bridgewater Hall as principal guest conductor – with a programme to mark International Women’s Day, and consisting entirely of music by women composers, past and present. Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov, Barbican review - from Russia, with tough loveSaturday, 08 March 2025
Exactly half a century ago, Semyon Bychkov fled the USSR for the United States as he sought to swap tyranny for liberty. Last night, in a world that feels utterly different yet even more terrifying, the great conductor turned the stellar talents of his Czech Philharmonic Orchestra to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich: both a victim, and a troubled celebrant, of the searing Soviet history he endured. Read more... |
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