Classical Reviews
Tabula Rasa, Traverse Theatre review - honest, compassionate, but not always convincingFriday, 10 November 2017
Collaboration and collegiality are becoming ever more important across the Scottish arts scene, it seems. Glasgow theatre company Vanishing Point teamed up with Scottish Opera earlier this year for a double-bill based around Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Read more... |
LSO, Alsop, Barbican review - Bernstein 100 opens not with celebrations but existential angstMonday, 06 November 2017
Amen. The end – of a prayer, a service, even the Bible itself. But what, asks Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No 3, Kaddish, if “Amen” is the beginning and not the end, the start of a conversation that hears the divine word and doesn’t say “So be it” and accept, but instead answers back? Read more... |
LPO, Renes, RFH review - solid Bruckner lacking in nuanceMonday, 06 November 2017
This concert was to have been conducted by Stanisław Skrowaczewski, who died in February. Though futile, it’s hard not to speculate about what could have been, especially given his spectacular Bruckner performances with the London Philharmonic in recent years. Read more... |
BBCSO, Storgårds, Barbican review – Jolas intrigues, Mahler 4 disappointsSaturday, 04 November 2017
Betsy Jolas is a pioneer, the programme for this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert told us, and she’s certainly unique. Now 91, she has been following her own course for many decades, an associate of the 1960s French avant-garde, but never a subscriber to its doctrines. Her concerto for piano and trumpet, Histoires vraies (2015), here received its UK premiere. Read more... |
Dmitri Alexeev, St John's Smith Square review - a Titan at 70Friday, 03 November 2017
You won't have seen much of magisterial Russian pianist Dmitri Alexeev recently, unless you happen to be a student at the Royal College of Music, where he is Professor of Advanced Piano Studies (they were out in force last night, cheering enough to elicit five encores). Read more... |
Hugo Ticciati, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Cathedral review - spirituality, no spooksThursday, 02 November 2017
Manchester Camerata chose All Hallows’ Eve for a concert of (in some part) "holy" minimalism. Arvo Pärt’s Silouan’s Song began it, and his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten ended it. They headlined it "Spiritualism and Minimalism", but I think what they really had in mind was spirituality. No "one knock for yes" or anything like that, anyway. Read more... |
Leif Ove Andsnes, RFH review - interior magic from a master colouristWednesday, 01 November 2017
Such introspective subtlety might be mistaken for reticence. But from the rare instances when the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes lets rip - and they're never forced - you know he's wielding his palette with both skill and intuition, waiting for the big moment to make its proper mark. Read more... |
Soltani, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Barenboim, RFH review - passionate pilgrimagesMonday, 30 October 2017
A legendary name and the chance to change the face of a cruel condition set the stakes high for what Prince Charles, in his programme preface for this Southbank spectacular, told us was called the Stop MS Jacqueline du Pré Tribute Concert. Read more... |
Bavouzet, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - playing the long game in SibeliusSaturday, 28 October 2017
Perhaps Sibelius did the right thing, signing off Tapiola in 1926 and then all but closing his account, spending the next three decades sitting and drinking. Read more... |
Orpheus Caledonius, Brighton Early Music Festival review - a thrilling meeting of musical clansSaturday, 28 October 2017
In 1725 a collection of some 50 songs was published by one William Thomson. You might not know his name, or even the names of the songs, but given the first bar of most I’m betting you could hum them from beginning to end. The work? Read more... |
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