Classical Reviews
Scott, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, RIAM, Dublin review - towards a Mozart masterpieceMonday, 06 October 2025
One miracle of musical performance is that a work you’ve loved for years can be revealed as never before in an outstanding interpretation. That happened to me last week at the New Ross Piano Festival when 22-year-old pianist Magdalene Cho turned us upside down in Bach’s Sixth Partita. It happened again last night when Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra hit 1788 with one of the three symphonic masterpieces Mozart composed in a single summer, the 39th. Read more... |
France, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - the sound of other worldsSaturday, 04 October 2025
Even in the 21st century, it may not take that long for an outlandish literary experiment to jump genres and become an established musical classic. In 2008, I enthusiastically reviewed a strange, poetic, almost Beckett-like novella by the writer and music critic Paul Griffiths. Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Britten Sinfonia, Shave, Milton Court - a grin and a big beaming smileFriday, 03 October 2025
Schubert’s Fifth Symphony is one of those pieces whose existence in the modern world hangs on the most tenuous of threads. After its posthumous premiere the score was lost for half a century before a set of parts resurfaced, and the work was saved for posterity. Read more... |
Lapwood, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - journeys into spaceFriday, 03 October 2025
Kahchun Wong’s second Bridgewater Hall concert of the new season was partly an introduction to the Hallé’s artist-in-residence for 2025-26, Anna Lapwood. The star organist brought a new piece by Max Richter for organ, choir and orchestra and a recent one by Olivia Belli for organ solo – both on the theme of space travel. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the New Ross Piano Festival - Finghin Collins’ musical rainbowFriday, 03 October 2025
High on the hill of fascinating New Ross in County Wexford sits its greatest treasure, the ruined 13th century Gothic beauty of St Mary’s. Unless you come at it from the east, its glories are concealed behind the working church which completes it and takes the place of the old nave, built in 1813 and “improved” twice later that century. Read more... |
Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place review - music of hope from a young composerSaturday, 27 September 2025
Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of contemporary pieces – including several premieres – by horn superstar Ben Goldscheider and string quartet Brother Tree Sound, “curated”, as the current lingo has it, by young composer Ben Nobuto, whose high-spirited and invigorating music finished things on a high. Read more... |
Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - moving lyricism in Elgar’s concertoFriday, 26 September 2025
Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist in their performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the season’s opening concert at the Bridgewater Hall (Truls Mørk having had to withdraw). Read more... |
Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manchester review - joy, insight, imagination and unanimityWednesday, 24 September 2025
The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester Camerata that marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the RNCM’s Junior Fellowship programme. Read more... |
Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing emotional workoutsMonday, 22 September 2025
Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very eve of lockdown in 2020. The work’s dying fall then was echoed by the spectral drift ending Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony. This time Frang’s equal as the greatest of violinists, Janine Jansen, faced the daunting solo role fearlessly, and the riproaring end of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony proved that this team is here to stay. Read more... |
Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fleshcreep in two uneven halvesMonday, 22 September 2025
Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša went for fleshcreep: too little of Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin – given a chorus, he could have done the half-hour ballet, not just the suite – and too much of a spooky thing in a big Dvořák cantata. Read more... |
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