Hay-on-Wye is so famous for shops that sell books and for a festival which platforms their authors, that it may come as a surprise (a relief, even) to discover that it also has a music festival. It’s admittedly a modest affair, chamber music only, no tents or signings, no desperate scurrying from quartet to quartet through mud or dust. It’s very much a local festival, the pinnacle, so to speak, of a hyper-active local music society. But provincial it is not. Its director, Mick Peake, as well as being a distinguished oncologist, is a board member (ex-chairman) of the Huddersfield Read more ...

Like most people not immersed in the world of classical music, I had no clear idea of what a conductor does (other than a vague impression that they made contorted shapes in front of hyper attentive musicians!) but here I am one spring evening in a church hall in Brighton, watching a man with the incredible body language of Elvis Presley and Larry David combined, plucking gorgeous streams of melody from an enthusiastic group of players. As he swings his arms with a mix of delicate and firm musical instructions, his body movements appear totally entwined with the sound, as if he and the music Read more ...

Frank Loesser: Guys and Dolls Sierra Boggess, Nathaniel Hackmann, Louise Dearman, David Seadon-Young et al, Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos) Image Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls is one of the truly great Broadway musicals. Conductor John Wilson suggests that this 1950 score has endured because, in addition to having “great music, great lyrics and great book”, it’s hysterically funny. David Benedict’s booklet essay usefully traces the show’s genesis, playwright Jo Swerling’s adaptation of a short story by New York journalist and comic Read more ...

For composers like Mozart and Beethoven, the key of B minor was traditionally one of the most melancholic keys – in Mozart’s case, specifically, it was closely associated with death. Yet though Bach’s great masterpiece was completed shortly before he died, far from courting spiritual bleakness it is one of his most uplifting works, alternating between monastic serenity and celestial splendour.On a purely technical level, that’s in part because – as several music scholars have pointed out – the majority of its movements are written in D major. Yet it’s also the triumphant distillation of a Read more ...

Sixteen world premieres and two Welsh premieres, performed in the space of five days by a string chamber orchestra, a choir and several instrumental soloists – that’s quite an undertaking, but it’s par for the course for Presteigne Festival. Contemporary music is deep in the DNA of the event, which every year brings a group of performers together in the small Welsh border town for an immersive few days in which pieces from the classical canon provide occasional punctuation marks in programmes that celebrate the work of living composers.Some of this year’s premieres were miniatures, such as Read more ...

After the mighty artillery of the Berliner Philharmoniker, here was a German-themed and German-delivered Prom full of subtle, even heart-warming, surprises. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, that most collegiate of period ensembles, pivoted backwards at the end of the show to bow gracefully towards Henry Wood’s bust. Before their all-Schumann programme led, nimbly and genially, by Sir Simon Rattle in his least maestro-like mood, they had collectively bowed to us, the audience. During the final applause, Rattle (pictured below) came back to share a glass with principal bassist Dane Roberts Read more ...

This was not a Prom with a light and breezy tone. Vaughan Williams’s craggy Ninth Symphony and Britten’s intense pre-war Violin Concerto were coupled with a new commission that explored violent public protest – although this new piece was less confrontational than this description might suggest. The only light to go with all this shade was found in Vaughan Williams’s luminous and timeless Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.This masterpiece opened the programme, with the opening chords and pizzicatos emerging almost imperceptibly from the strings of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Read more ...

GOAT claims leave me cold, whether applied to athletes or orchestras. Nonetheless, it seems to matter to many people that the Berliner Philharmoniker be discussed as if they are, or were, or should be, the foremost musical outfit of their age – and perhaps preceding eras too. Let's park the GOAT fetish and consider what a (naturally) sold-out Royal Albert Hall heard last night.Kirill Petrenko led the orchestra and soloist Augustin Hadelich (pictured below by Chris Christodoulou) through a masterly, often exquisite but (to my ears) not always electrifying account of the Beethoven violin Read more ...

Elgar could be self-pitying, but rarely in his music, and least of all in the classically perfect "Enigma" Variations. Despite recent commentators trying to discredit Tchaikovsky's personal programme for his Fourth Symphony as confided to his patron Nadezha von Meck, there's no doubt that the first movement, at least, expresses his overwrought state of mind in 1878. Kirill Petrenko, magician whose thought and feeling still communicate mesmerisingly to his Berlin Philharmonic, found an ideal balance between passion and precision in both works. The question of how deep these performances Read more ...

If you want a full, 5000-strong audience in the Royal Albert Hall, and the second-half work won't sell by itself, insert a popular concerto. It worked so well for Vasily Petrenko and the RPO in a perfect programme earlier in the Proms, and the Elgar Cello Concerto got as mesmerising a performance as Walton's Second Symphony. Jakub Hrůša worked with a fellow Czech he knows well, Lukáš Vondráček, in Rachmaninov's colossal Third Piano Concerto, but though the audience was delighted with the sensitive virtuosity, it didn't flow anything like as well as the Janáček Sinfonietta in the second half. Read more ...

I am often attracted to certain composers based on their uncompromising nature. Beethoven, Schumann and Boulez, for instance, fascinate me for those reasons. I am impelled as a pianist to shape my ears, heart and hands around their sense of an absolute ideal; playing their music requires me to summon the will to extend past myself in order to reach a higher musical summit. The music of Franz Schubert, however, is something else entirely. As my teacher Jonathan Biss writes: “Beethoven grabs you by the collar; Schubert leads you by the hand.” Schubert is not concerned with inciting Read more ...

After perdition, salvation – with the Royal Albert Hall in the unlikely role of redeemer. Last winter, the much-garlanded French period ensemble Les Siècles performed a semi-staged production of Berlioz’s 1846 “concert opera” La Damnation de Faust at their Parisian home, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Director Silvia Costa’s whimsical conceits – with Faust as a sort of dreaming hipster in a toy-filled bedroom – were thoroughly panned. Worse: reviews suggested that she had taken the (generally excellent) musicians and singers down with her.In that case, I’m happy to report that Les Read more ...