sat 20/09/2025

Classical Reviews

Sun Rings, Sacconi Quartet, Festival Voices, Kings Place review - lift-off for an exhilarating voyage into the unknown

Rachel Halliburton

What better way to start a season about the Earth than by looking back on it from an astronaut’s perspective? At a time when the activities of assorted billionaires and emerging superpowers are making the space race topical again, it feels more than appropriate for Kings Place to begin its Earth Unwrapped programme with Terry Riley’s Sun Rings.

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Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel, Barbican review - an epic journey from gossamer-like intimacy to apocalyptic rage

Rachel Halliburton

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela took the Barbican by storm last night with a thrilling account of Mahler’s Third Symphony, his great exploration of the cosmic order, ascending from raw paganism to sublime transcendence. It's technically the longest symphony ever composed, and here it swept the audience through an epic journey that tilted between passages of gossamer-like intimacy and outbursts of apocalyptic rage.

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German National Orchestra, Marshall, Cadogan Hall review - sheer youthful exuberance

Sebastian Scotney

This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of whose players are aged from 14 to 19, make a glorious, powerful sound. Just over 100 teenage musicians packed the extended stage at Cadogan Hall last night, and played to a nearly full house.

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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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