Classical Reviews
Biss, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, NCH Dublin review - full house goes wild for vivid epicsSaturday, 29 March 2025
On paper, it was a standard programme with no stars to explain how this came to be a sellout concert. But packed it was, an audience of all ages which sat with concentrated awe through the spellbinding slow movement of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto and went wild at the end of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Both works were groundbreaking at the time, sounding absolutely fresh here with the passion and precision awesomely well balanced by conductor Lio Kuokman. Read more... |
Verdi Requiem, Philharmonia, Muti, RFH review - new sparks from an old flameFriday, 28 March 2025
Forget, for a moment, the legend and the lustre. If you knew nothing about Riccardo Muti’s half-century of history with Verdi’s Messa da Requiem for the writer-patriot Alessandro Manzoni – he first gave it with the Philharmonia back in 1974 – and came fresh to this conductor with this work, would it shake the soul? Read more... |
Batsashvili, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a star in the piano universeTuesday, 25 March 2025
Mariam Batsashvili, the young virtuosa pianist from Georgia, is a star. No doubt about that. Trained at the Liszt Academy in Weimar and winner of the International Franz Liszt Competition for Young Pianists in that city in 2015, she should know something about how to play Liszt’s music. Read more... |
Naumov, SCO, Egarr, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - orchestral magic rescues some punishing musicSaturday, 22 March 2025
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has had to put up with its fair share of artist cancellations over the last month, and the ensuing games of musical chairs led to the somewhat implausible scenario of this concert, where Richard Egarr, a conductor more closely associated with Bach and Handel, conducted the UK premiere of a work by Peter Eötvös, that darling of the avant-garde. Read more... |
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... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Music Reissues Weekly: Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man,...
Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk
On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other...
Biss, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, NCH Dublin revie...
On paper, it was a standard programme with no stars to explain how this came to be a sellout concert. But packed it was, an audience of all ages...
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath r...
In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands...
Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story
Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, is a prime example of why some comebacks should remain hypothetical. After two decades...
Verdi Requiem, Philharmonia, Muti, RFH review - new sparks f...
Forget, for a moment, the legend and the lustre. If you knew nothing about Riccardo Muti’s half-century of history with Verdi’s Messa da...
Wilko: Love and Death and Rock'n'Roll, Southwark P...
Resurrecting the origins of old rock stars is becoming quite the thing, After cinema’s Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan and...
The End review - surreality in the salt mine
The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced ...
Playhouse Creatures, Orange Tree Theatre review - jokes, shi...
Creatives – or creatures? In the 1660s, women – having been banned from working as actors in previously more...