mon 14/04/2025

Classical Reviews

First Night of the Proms, Hyde, BBCSO, Stasevska review - levitational ecstasies

David Nice

Did absence from Albert’s colosseum from early September 2019 until now and a roof-raising finale hoodwink many of us into thinking Dalia Stasevska’s interpretation of Sibelius’s Second Symphony among the greats? Having listened to it again on the BBC Radio 3 iPlayer this morning, I'm convinced not; this was the real deal.

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theartsdesk at the Three Choirs Festival - Purcell, Gabriel Jackson and Duruflé

stephen Walsh

King Arthur, as every schoolgirl knows, never actually existed, so it made perfect sense that the Gabrieli Consort’s Worcester Cathedral performance of Purcell’s semi-opera about the mythical British king and his battles with the Saxon incomers made not the slightest mention of Arthur.

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Opera in Song, Opera Holland Park review – world-class singers in a brilliant recital triptych

David Nice

Now that the summer opera-house companies have pulled off staged triumphs under the most difficult of circumstances, it’s time to celebrate semi-al-fresco concerts. Not so many have cropped up as I’d hoped after the success of the Battersea Park Bandstand Chamber Music series last year.

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East Neuk Festival 2021 / Benjamin Baker, Fidelio Orchestra Café review – singing in the rain

David Nice

The heading may be a bit misleading.

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Carducci Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - complexity and depth

Gavin Dixon

This programme was a bit of a calling card from the Carducci Quartet. They have previously recorded all three works, and the three composers, Haydn, Shostakovich, Beethoven, clearly play to their strengths.

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'You have to be willing to kill your darlings': conductor Clark Rundell on advice from composer Louis Andriessen (1939-2021)

Clark Rundell

It’s taken me a day to try to find some words to share at the passing of my dear friend, mentor and guardian angel Louis Andriessen and I’m grateful to theartsdesk for giving me the space. It is such a profound loss because of the profound gifts he gave us. His fabulous music is deep, tender, highly personal and achingly beautiful but also funny, ironic, joyful and deliciously vulgar.

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Dunedin Consort, Butt, Wigmore Hall review – bijou Bach

Gavin Dixon

The Edinburgh-based Dunedin Consort are regular visitors to the Wigmore Hall, and their concert on Saturday night was greeting by a full house.

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Never to Forget, Spitalfields Festival review – moving musical tributes to lost care and health workers

Bernard Hughes

During early lockdown in 2020 Howard Goodall published an article pondering the role of the composer in a pandemic. His answer was that music has throughout history been successful at memorialising people and events, and that it could do so again.

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Tenebrae, Short, Saffron Hall review - from dark shadows to bright heavens

David Nice

While the big choral societies are asking, with good cause, why they remain silenced when it’s OK for football fans to sing on the terraces, the top voices of smaller ensembles are being heard again by select audiences.

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Hallé, Berglund, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - taking Beethoven seriously

Robert Beale

Tabita Berglund is that rare species, an up-and-coming orchestral conductor attracting enough attention to secure repeated international bookings in even these straitened times. She also happens to be female and young, which until relatively recently would have been seen as another major handicap to success.

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