thu 25/09/2025

Classical Reviews

Kolesnikov, Tsoy / Liu, NCPA Orchestra, Chung, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - transfigured playing and heavenly desire

Simon Thompson

Say what you like about this year’s slimmer-than-usual Edinburgh International Festival, but when it has hit the spot, it has done so triumphantly. Nowhere has that so far been truer than in the piano playing, as this pair of concerts demonstrated. 

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BBC Proms: Láng, Cser, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer review - idiomatic inflections

David Nice

“Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night,” quoth Blake. Beethoven and Bartók knew both extremes, but Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra led us from the most dancing of Seventh Symphonies to the endless night of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, from explosive A major to quietest C sharp minor. If not everything along the way was perfect, or even in one major case present, the outlines were bold and engaging.

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Weilerstein, NYO2, Payare / Dueñas, Malofeev, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - youthful energy and emotional intensity

Simon Thompson

NYO2 is a group of dazzlingly talented (and terrifyingly young-looking) 14-17 year olds from the USA, one of Carnegie Hall’s three national youth ensembles, and with a focus on supporting young musicians from communities that are under-represented in the arts. This Edinburgh International Festival concert marked their European debut, and they’re doing a miniature residency in Edinburgh that, in another concert, involves them playing alongside some talented young Scots. 

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theartsdesk at the Three Choirs Festival - Passion in the Cathedral

stephen Walsh

“Powerful, Timeless, Inspiring” it says on the front cover of the programme-book for this year’s supposedly 297th Three Choirs Festival at Hereford. So please leave your frivolity at the cathedral door with your gun and your mobile phone.

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BBC Proms: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaljuste review - Arvo Pärt 90th birthday tribute

Bernard Hughes

Arvo Pärt was into his 40s before he made had his Big Musical Idea: simplicity. He has spent the subsequent half-century pursuing this ideal, largely through the religious choral music that has been dubbed Holy Minimalism. And in this year of his 90th birthday, the Proms gave the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir a late-night concert to celebrate this music – and the people turned out, in what was the best-attended late-nighter I can remember.

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BBC Proms: Kholodenko, BBCNOW, Otaka review - exhilarating Lutosławski, underwhelming Rachmaninov

Bernard Hughes

According to the programme, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra is heard somewhere around the world every other week. In which case I’ve been unlucky in never having heard it live before, despite being a fan for nearly 30 years. So I was relieved that last night’s Prom’s outing – in Tadaaki Otaka’s farewell with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, after a 40 year collaboration – didn’t disappoint.

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theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2025 - Arvo Pärt at 90 flanked by lightness and warmth

David Nice

Life-changing? That's how the Pärnu Music Festival felt on my first visit in 2015, alongside the discovery of Estonia as a pillar of the European Union ideal. It’s also how Palestinian Lamar Elias, a student on the annual conducting course, described Paavo Järvi’s Beethoven Seven this year with his Estonian Festival Orchestra: a typical high repeated the next night with Arvo rt’s Credo to follow.

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BBC Proms: Batsashvili, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth review - grief and glory

Boyd Tonkin

This Prom began in sombre and melancholic shades of grey. Then, as her encore, the superb Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili launched into Liszt’s Paganini étude, “La Campanella”, and bells of long-awaited joy rang around the Royal Albert Hall. Under those leaping acrobatic fingers, musical sunshine drove away the clouds.

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BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - spring-heeled variety

David Nice

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many Shostakovich pops, the Ravel concerto and Walton symphony ahead sailed for deeper waters, And the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is on top form, lucky to have one of the world’s best conductors, Mark Wigglesworth, in charge. 

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BBC Proms: First Night, Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo review - glorious Vaughan Williams

Bernard Hughes

The auditorium and arena were packed – and the stage even more so, bursting at the seams with players and singers: the perfect set-up for a First Night of the Proms. This is traditionally an opportunity to programme a large-scale choral work, and last night that was Vaughan Williams’s seldom heard Sancta Civitas.

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