mon 15/09/2025

Classical Reviews

Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - colour and courage, from Hardanger to Majorca

Boyd Tonkin

Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (or rather, Paris and Majorca) with a final stop in France. A recital that began with two large-scale Norwegian sonatas – one a remarkable discovery – culminated in the ostensibly remote sound-world of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, part-written on the Balearic island.

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Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Wigglesworth, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - Boulez with bonbons

Robert Beale

Top Brownie points for the BBC Philharmonic for being one of the first (maybe the first?) to celebrate the birth centenary of Pierre Boulez this year. His Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna was paired somewhat uneasily with a second half of bonbons by Ravel (it’s his 150th anniversary year, too).

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Liepe, National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, Cottis, NCH, Dublin review - a spirited shot at Shostakovich

David Nice

There’s nothing like an anodyne new(ish) work to give a masterpiece an even higher profile. Rachel Portman‘s Tipping Points, promising to address climate change issues, was so bland and featureless it could have been composed by AI. Any one bar of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, on the other hand, shows originality of throught within a tradition, and unlike the Portman near-vacuum it challenged the musicians of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland to the limits.

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Davis, National Symphony Orchestra, Maloney, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - operetta in excelsis

David Nice

In one sense it was a New Year’s Day “nearly”, just stopping short of giving us the already great Irish lyric-dramatic soprano Jennifer Davis in the music of the man she was born to sing, Richard Strauss. Berlin will witness her Arabella shortly, but the one Bavarian intruder in the otherwise all-Viennese carnival yesterday afternoon, the Moonlight Music from Capriccio, stopped before the Countess’s final scene.

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Best of 2024: Classical music concerts

David Nice

As always, great concerts have outnumbered great opera productions over a year, and all of our national orchestras can be proud of their record. I’ve sometimes started by celebrating youth, and it’s good to be able to do that in the shape of two competition finales totally satisfying as programmes. The palm, though, goes to two veterans who made me wonder at their ease and natural communication.

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Spence, Perez, Richardson, Wigmore Hall review - a Shakespearean journey in song

Boyd Tonkin

“O stay and hear,” sings Twelfth Night’s jester Feste in his song “O mistress mine”, “your true love’s coming,/ That can sing both high and low.” And loud and soft, earthbound and airborne, Heldentenor-grave and night-club frivolous: Nicky Spence’s wide vocal span and stylistic versatility made him the ideal soloist for this cheerful post-Christmas canter through several centuries of Shakespeare songs.

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The English Concert, Bicket, Wigmore Hall review - a Baroque banquet for Christmas

Boyd Tonkin

Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The English Concert, directed by Harry Bicket, concluded their festive Baroque banquet with Bach’s Magnificat – complete with its four Christmas-tide interpolations. They had prefaced the Bach with a trio of lesser-known seasonal pieces dating from the preceding decades, by Charpentier, Stradella, and Purcell.

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Messiah, Wild Arts, Chichester Cathedral review - a dynamic battle between revelatory light and Stygian gloom

Rachel Halliburton

The Wild Arts Ensemble was founded by Orlando Jopling in 2022 to create a dynamic, pared-back style of performance in which, as he put it, the “costumes, set and props… can be packed up into a couple of suitcases that we can take with us on the train”.

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Messiah, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Barbican review - once more, with real feeling

Boyd Tonkin

When does a concert become a ceremony? You generally visit the Barbican for art rather than ritual. Yet, during the Academy of Ancient Music’s performance last night, the bulk of a packed house still stood up for the “Hallelujah” that closes the second part of Handel’s Messiah.

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Christmas with Connaught Brass, Milton Court review - delightful seasonal fare from Bach to Boulanger

Bernard Hughes

Connaught Brass is a quintet of twenty-something players rapidly establishing an enviable reputation, and on the evidence of what I heard yesterday that reputation is fully deserved: they really are superbly good.

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