LPO
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy productionTuesday, 24 May 2022
After two years of Covid-affected performances – even though there was a full season last year – Glyndebourne's annual festival is finally back in full glory. Following the big blaze of Saturday's The Wreckers, Sunday welcomed back Michael Grandage'... Read more... |
Hodges, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - four UK premieres, from random to abundantThursday, 31 March 2022
Kudos, first, to Edward Gardner for mastering a rainbow programme of 21st century works in his first season as the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor. Three Americans and a Berlin-based Brit, two women composers and two men, one of... Read more... |
Bartlett, LPO, Mathieson, Congress Theatre, Eastbourne review – Rhymes, Rhapsody and Winter DaydreamsTuesday, 15 March 2022
Who could have imagined the table-turning controversy that might have cast doubt on the inclusion of works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky when planning this programme?Before raising the baton, Holly Mathieson expressed the hope that Russian music... Read more... |
Rachlin, Oslo PO, Mäkelä, Oslo Konserthus/Perianes, LPO, Berman, RFH review - the best-laid plans…Thursday, 24 February 2022
The headline was never going to be snappy, but “Klaus Mäkelä conducts…” as a start would have pulled it all together. A trip to Oslo last week was not wasted: he did indeed take charge of one of his two main orchestras, in a typically offbeat... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, LPO, Bloxham, Congress Theatre, Eastbourne review - stark Russian contrastsWednesday, 23 February 2022
With a predictable Sheku sell-out in the hall, the context of post-Eunice clean-up and current teetering on the brink with Russia lent a strangely unsettling and salutary resonance to the programme of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto framed by... 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... 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... Read more... |
MacMillan Christmas Oratorio, LPO, Elder, RFH review – a new star for the seasonMonday, 06 December 2021
The shadow of the cross falls over James MacMillan’s manger. You may come for his work’s consoling, even transporting, beauty and mystery. It’s there in abundance in his new Christmas Oratorio. Yet what may grip hardest are his passages of crashing... Read more... |
Tchetuev, LPO, Larsen-Maguire, Congress Theatre, Eastbourne review - sunshine by the seaTuesday, 30 November 2021
Even with a chill wind blowing from the Sussex Downs, this copper-bottomed Overture-Concerto-Symphony Sunday matinée was guaranteed to entice concert-goers to Eastbourne’s Sunshine Coast, which duly dazzled both outside and inside the hall.Beethoven... Read more... |
Bluebeard’s Castle 2: Komlósi, Relyea, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - consolations of solitudeMonday, 08 November 2021
Where is the stage – outside or within? The question posed by the prologue of Bartók’s only opera addresses the fundamental privacy of our thoughts, as well as setting the scene for its drama within the theatre of our own minds. For many of us a... Read more... |
The Midsummer Marriage, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – Tippett’s cornucopia shines in fits and startsSunday, 26 September 2021
British opera’s attempted answer to The Magic Flute, and its presentation as the opening gambit of Edward Gardner’s eminent position as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leave me queasily ambivalent.After all the smoke and... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne, BBC Proms review - endless love, perfect paceWednesday, 01 September 2021
“Now I’ve conducted Tristan for the first time,” the 27-year-old Richard Strauss wrote from Weimar to Wagner’s widow Cosima in 1892, “and it was the most wonderful day of my life”. Robin Ticciati, over a decade older but still young in terms of his... Read more... |
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