Classical Reviews

Joyce DiDonato, Wigmore Hall

alexandra Coghlan Thursday, 05 July 2012

By the time she went to college to study to become a singing teacher, Joyce DiDonato had been to exactly two different American states: Kansas and Colorado. New York and San Francisco were as yet unvisited, Europe and Asia as yet undreamed of. It’s a story DiDonato herself tells with practised humour.

Ibragimova, Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, Gardner, Mansion House

Geoff Brown Friday, 29 June 2012

For the general public, getting to see the Mansion House in the City of London is almost as easy a task as becoming a dentist who specialises in hen’s teeth. But that was not the only reason for coming along to last night’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert conducted by Edward Gardner. For this City of London Festival programme contained a most teasing prospect.

Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel, Royal Festival Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Wednesday, 27 June 2012

Standing ovations. Spontaneous genuflections. A we-can-change-the-world lecture. This must be what's it like to live in a Communist state. Funnily enough, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, who we were saying goodbye to last night in the final concert of their four-day Southbank residency, already do. I'm not a supporter of El Sistema, the body which gave birth to this youth orchestra.

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London 2012: The Big Concert, Raploch

Jasper Rees Friday, 22 June 2012

There are of course no superlatives left when it comes to these Venezuelans. And yet last night called on those witnessing the al fresco performance of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra to root around in the store cupboard for a couple more. Coldest midsummer night ever experienced by a South American? No that won’t be it. Wettest? Neither. Most tumultuous celebration of the centrality of music in all our lives to take place in a Scottish field? Certainly.

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Vienna Philharmonic, Rattle, Barbican Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 18 June 2012

Just as the most impeccably aristocratic families have the shabbiest homes, so the oldest and most prestigious orchestras frequently deliver the most scrappy performances. Trying too hard is so arriviste. King of this insouciant shabby chic are the Vienna Philharmonic. It's almost as if at some point the orchestra got bored of playing well. One hundred and sixty years at the top delivering the world's warmest, plushest, most sophisticated sound must get repetitive.

Last Train to Tomorrow, Hallé, Davis, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

philip Radcliffe Monday, 18 June 2012

The exceptionally moving and heartwarming story of more than 10,000 mostly Jewish children being brought to the safe haven of these shores between December 1938 and September 1939 to rescue them from being victims of the Holocaust, Kindertransport, has oft been told. But now we hear it afresh through the voices of children in a dramatised re-telling.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Mark Padmore, Lutosławski, Bartók, Denner Ensemble

graham Rickson Saturday, 16 June 2012

Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn and strings; Nocturne; Finzi: Dies Natalis Mark Padmore, Britten Sinfonia/Jacqueline Shave, with Stephen Bell (horn) (Harmonia Mundi)

Aimard, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Festival Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 11 June 2012

The repertoire of the OAE is creeping away from the 18th century and into the 20th with such unashamed eagerness, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see them throwing up an urtext edition of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a few seasons. Last night, we got 20th-century French impressionism, including a work that was premiered in 1933. Some might call this expansion into the las

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Maxwell Davies Ninth Symphony, RLPO, Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Glyn Môn Hughes Monday, 11 June 2012

The new Ninth Symphony, from the pen of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, is something of a paradox. It was commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Helskinki Philharmonic Orchestra and is dedicated to the Queen on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. And yet it is a round condemnation of the nation’s interventions – called "disastrous" by the composer in his programme notes – in Iraq and Afghanistan.