Classical Reviews
Path of Miracles, Tenebrae, Short, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - a modern choral classicFriday, 21 October 2022
This is the third time I’ve heard Path of Miracles live this year and I’d happily hear it another three times before Christmas. I reviewed the amateur Elysian Singers sing it in February, and the BBC Singers took it on for the first time in May – but last night’s triumphant version by Tenebrae was surely the best of the lot. Read more... |
Ax, LPO, Canellakis, RFH review - from the soil to the starsThursday, 20 October 2022
Good conductors should surely be seen as well as heard. Read more... |
Vaughan Williams Anniversary Concert, Wigmore Hall review - choices, choicesTuesday, 18 October 2022
A 150th birthday cornucopia was anticipated: vintage chamber and vocal Vaughan Williams in a big Wigmore Hall three-parter alongside music by other great Brits. It turned out, instead, to be a handsome if overlarge horn sounding several cracked notes. Read more... |
Orpheus, Opera North review - cross-cultural opera in actionSaturday, 15 October 2022
Within its own aspirations, Orpheus is a complete triumph. “Monteverdi reimagined”, as Opera North subtitled it from the start, is an attempt to unite (and contrast, and compare, and cross-fertilise) early baroque opera with South Asian classical music. Read more... |
Esfahani, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - music meets machineWednesday, 12 October 2022
This was one of those rare occasions when a somewhat diverse collection of pieces knits together into a rather satisfying programme. To start at the end, the Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony is a rumbustious crowd pleaser not least because of its theatrical appeal: the lone organist sitting way above the orchestra unleashing the final peroration in a great surge of full-fat romantic harmony. Read more... |
Total Immersion: Sibelius the Storyteller, Barbican review - a feast of sagas and psychic masterpiecesTuesday, 11 October 2022
If there’s a dud or a dullard among Sibelius’s 116 official opus numbers, I haven’t heard it. Yet catching even many of the outright masterpieces live in concert isn’t easy; the brevity that can show us a world in under 10 minutes makes some difficult to programme. Read more... |
Noisenight10, Roberts Balanas, Omeara Club review - virtuosic brilliance with a wave to the wild sideMonday, 10 October 2022
When Roberts Balanas was at the Royal Academy of Music he was asked to perform something “different” for an open day. The Latvian violinist already had a reputation for being as experimental as he was virtuosic. Read more... |
Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall review - power and grace in elegies and monumentsSaturday, 08 October 2022
A double-sided A4 sheet is better than a programme online only – the default for several London venues now – but the Wigmore Hall missed a vital trick in failing to tell us what Boris Giltburg intended in a transcendental sequence which should have been headed “death and remembrance”, He’s an eloquent writer, too; his own note would have been much better than the disconnected observations we got about Bach/Busoni, Ravel, Chopin and Medtner. Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Hallé, Elder, Manchester review - commanding Smetana, Rachmaninov and StraussFriday, 07 October 2022
As Sir Mark Elder begins his penultimate season as music director of the Hallé, it’s clear that his command of, and communication with, the orchestra are as complete and purpose-driven as ever. It’s the first Thursday series concert of the new season, and at last a full set of concerts is in the offing, after three years of interruption and adaptation, but change is in the air. Read more... |
Purcell's Playhouse, Bevan, Barokksolistene, Eike, Purcell Room review - kaleidoscopic delightsTuesday, 27 September 2022
“What about the communication with the audience?” asked violinist and impresario Bjarte Eike in his First Person piece for theartsdesk. “How can a 'normal' concert be turned into a special event?” Explaining how is one thing – but doing it to dazzle our senses is what counts. Though the Alehouse Session which followed out in the foyer was brilliant business more or less as usual, “Purcell’s Playhouse” took us further on the road of making the old absolutely new. Read more... |
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