Classical Reviews
St Martin's Voices, Earis, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - music from the beginningWednesday, 29 May 2024
The concert offering at St-Martin-in-the-Fields has transformed in recent years, under Director of Music Andrew Earis. There is still a decent amount of “Four Season by Candlelight” but this tourist-bait now sits alongside some brilliant programming featuring choirs like Tenebrae, Ex Cathedra and the Monteverdi Choir. Read more... |
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2024 review - curator Steven Isserlis spotlights masterly Fauré and Saint-SaënsTuesday, 28 May 2024
“Saint-Saëns: The Renaissance Man” proclaimed the big screen at the first remarkable programme I attended within the 2024 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. The same epithet could be applied to this year’s curator, Steven Isserlis, so remarkable a cellist that one forgets until coming face to face with his other talents what a unique speaker and programmer he is. Read more... |
Sphinx Organization, Wigmore Hall review - black performers and composers take centre stageMonday, 27 May 2024
Kudos to the Wigmore Hall for continuing to make efforts to diversify its roster of performers and repertoire. Last year I reviewed the Kaleidoscope Collective, and noted how the different profile of their players attracted a younger and less universally white audience to the hall, and the same happened again last night when the American Sphinx Organization were given the stage. Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - celestial navigation through a cabinet of wondersThursday, 23 May 2024
Like his baggy white suit, pitched somewhere between Liberace and Colonel Sanders, Pavel Kolesnikov’s playing was spotless at the Wigmore Hall last night. It comprised two very different halves, the first a miscellany of apparently unrelated pieces, the second devoted to a single set of pieces by a single composer. Read more... |
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Sousa, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - Beethoven, younger than springtimeMonday, 20 May 2024
Better (much better, indeed) late than never. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique should have given their cycle of Beethoven symphonies at St Martin-in-the-Fields in May 2020, after touring to Spain and the US. A lot has happened since. The pandemic scuppered the original timetable, while his own alleged actions – after he reportedly attacked a singer during rehearsals in France last year – have kept the ORR’s founder John Eliot Gardiner off the podium. Read more... |
Hough, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - affection and adventureMonday, 20 May 2024
It’s probably a bit early to be getting misty-eyed about the approaching end of Sir Mark Elder’s time as music director of the Hallé, but the programme he and they have just finished touring in the North of England will have been, for many, his real farewell. Its last outing was at the Bridgewater Hall yesterday, and it was (characteristically) a blend of the much-loved and familiar and something adventurous and new. Read more... |
Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - fun with abandonSaturday, 18 May 2024
There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy that is hard to resist. Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Mulroy, Wigmore Hall review - songs of love old and newThursday, 16 May 2024
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual programme at the Wigmore Hall last night. Combining the very old and the very new it offered a range of perspectives on texts that have attracted composers over centuries, and showed off the ensemble as one of the best in the business. Read more... |
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of lifeTuesday, 14 May 2024
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often blithely chat about the works’ epic struggle between life and death, creation and destruction, joy and dread. In a comfy hall with a slick orchestra and a polished maestro, all of that can feel abstract and remote. Not last night at the Barbican. Read more... |
Britten Sinfonia, The Marian Consort, Milton Court review - a journey around turbulent spirit GesualdoSunday, 12 May 2024
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who also found time to write music that was – according to some – centuries ahead of its time. He was the El Greco of sound, a rebel against perfectly balanced Renaissance proportions, who went on to influence cultural figures ranging from Stravinsky to Werner Herzog. Read more... |
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