After a century of trail-blazing Black musicians across every genre, it’s dumbfounding to discover that clarinettist Anthony McGill is the first African-American principal in the New York Philharmonic. He did have distinguished predecessors in the orchestra: in 1962 the remarkable violinist Sanford Allen became its first permanent Black member, and stayed until 1977. Without diminishing McGill’s signal achievements, it would be reasonable to say that, half a century later, he has had a slightly smoother path to follow.  Image That path Read more ...

It has taken until halfway through this year’s Edinburgh International Festival before we got to the first string quartet in the Queen’s Hall’s chamber music series, but when it came, the venue was packed to the gills. Maybe that’s the Sheku effect. Mr Kanneh-Mason (pictured below) was joining the Kleio Quartet to play one of the central pillars of the chamber music repertoire, Schubert’s String Quintet, so it’s hardly surprising that people came in their droves.  Image And it was worth it. This was the first time Kanneh-Mason had Read more ...

It's a reviewer's unkind luxury to moan about having to sit through yet another performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto simply to hear a rarer work; there will always be audience members, especially among the 5000 in the Royal Albert Hall, who'll never have heard the concerto live. Yet it's also a singular masterpiece, and last night Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández plumbed its melancholy depths and keenly reflected Vasily Petrenko's nuanced Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at every point. This was the perfect link between more-than-curtain-raiser Webern and Walton's fascinating Second Symphony. Read more ...

The clue is in the name, I suppose. Revolución diamantina – Glitter revolution – was written in 2023 by Gabriela Ortiz (pictured below) as a response to violence against women in Mexico, inspired by mass movements where protesters threw glitter on the police. However, there is glitter in Ortiz’s music, too, and in many ways it’s the ballet score’s energising force. Tintinnabulating percussion, glittering piccolo, beautifully scored effects of light and, perhaps above all else, dashed clever use of the women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale: all of these effects combine with the score’s edgy Read more ...

So much has vanished from my memory of the time I had a half-season Arena Proms pass back in 1982, but not the performance of Berlioz's Requiem (Grande Messe des Morts) with the four brass bands placed at compass points of the Albert Hall, emulating the composer's original positionings in Saint-Louis des Invalides. I awaited the same with rather childish glee for Antonio Pappano's marshalling of a large orchestral and choral army. It was not to be: two of the bands were left and right, respectively above the women and the men of the combined London Symphony and BBC Symphony Choruses, the Read more ...

The Art of David Munrow (Warner Classics) Image An online search tells me that the most popular gap year activity (for those who can afford it) is backpacking, the most popular destinations being Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. Not for the 18-year-old David Munrow, who deferred a Cambridge English degree by signing up with VSO in 1960 and heading to Lima to teach. Already a recorder player and bassoonist, he spent his Peruvian Christmas exploring, travelling deep into the Andes and encountering indigenous musical traditions. In his Read more ...

Several years ago, after a Queen’s Hall song morning, a fellow reviewer told me it was time we rethought the song recital, and that the old format of someone standing still while singing songs in German to an uncomprehending audience was way past its sell-by date. He should have been at this one, because Beth Taylor and Hamish Brown’s recital managed to turn the conventional song recital into a gripping piece of drama.Much of that, of course, was down to Taylor’s transfixingly unique voice. I’m always surprised that she is described as a mezzo-soprano, because the depth and richness of her Read more ...

This is Nicola Benedetti’s fourth opening concert while she has been in charge of the Edinburgh International Festival, and I suspect it might be the one she’s most proud of. That’s not (only) because it featured All Rise, the jazz symphony written by the superstar jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (who is also Benedetti’s husband), but because it seemed to unite all the things Benedetti has previously striven for in her opening concerts. Like the rest of them, this pushed the envelope beyond the standard western classical canon, combined diverse musical forces, and focused on themes of building Read more ...

On paper, this Prom looked like a well-stocked display-case for collective choral virtues. Baroque wizard Peter Whelan (pictured below) led the Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a rare first-half outing for the intensely dramatic Miserere in C minor by the Bohemian contemporary of Bach and Handel, Jan Dismas Zelenka. The second gave us the dependable vocal glories of Haydn’s “Nelson” Mass, retrospectively named for the Admiral after he (with Emma Hamilton in tow) visited the Esterházy court in 1800. Indeed, the OAE singers (and players) crafted properly Read more ...

What does a spectacular backdrop give to – or maybe take from? – a music festival? Exit the Wigmore Hall and, however transcendent the performance, you find yourself gazing on a posh kitchen showroom. Nothing in the vicinity can compete with the music. Leave the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix and the Mont Blanc range soars upwards with improbable drama, the perpetual snows of its summit girded by a squad of jagged, saw-toothed peaks.  Image This (pictured above from outside the church) was the iconic vista that fired the awe of Read more ...

Last night’s Prom saw two beloved favourites – Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony – prefaced by a fairly unknown quantity. This was Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s rediscovered Fairy-Tale Suite, written for radio by the German composer in 1950 but never performed until 2001. Unmistakably haunted by war-time nightmares, it takes us spine-tinglingly deep into some truly menacing woods. Sadly, the magically gifted Alina Ibragimova – soloist in the Mendelssohn – had to fight her way through thickets of her own as Elena Schwarz allowed a robust and well-muscled BBC Read more ...

Saxophobia: Celebrating the Sax Craze of the 1920s Chad Smith (alto and C-melody saxophones), Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos) Image Saxophobia is a tribute to Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940). In the mid-1920s, the saxophonist was a massively successful in the US. He had first emerged as the child star in an immigrant family from Germany which had its own Wiedoft Orchestra, first in Chicago and later in LA. As an adult he turned into a showman with flair, and made hundreds of recordings and several films. There’s a famous quote from Bing Read more ...