Classical Reviews
'You have to be willing to kill your darlings': conductor Clark Rundell on advice from composer Louis Andriessen (1939-2021)Thursday, 08 July 2021
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. Read more... |
Dunedin Consort, Butt, Wigmore Hall review – bijou BachMonday, 05 July 2021
The Edinburgh-based Dunedin Consort are regular visitors to the Wigmore Hall, and their concert on Saturday night was greeting by a full house. Read more... |
Never to Forget, Spitalfields Festival review – moving musical tributes to lost care and health workersFriday, 02 July 2021
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. Read more... |
Tenebrae, Short, Saffron Hall review - from dark shadows to bright heavensMonday, 28 June 2021
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. Read more... |
Hallé, Berglund, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - taking Beethoven seriouslySaturday, 19 June 2021
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. Read more... |
Matthews, LPO, Ticciati, Glyndebourne review - out of this worldThursday, 17 June 2021
Why travel to Glyndebourne for a concert? Well, for a start, none of us has heard a Mahler symphony live in full orchestral garb for at least 15 months, and though the Fourth is smaller-scale than some, its innocent beginnings belie the cosmic adventures ahead. Read more... |
Uchida, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review - Bach to the futureFriday, 11 June 2021
In the beginning, 38 years ago, came a career-making Mahler Third Symphony for Esa-Pekka Salonen in his first concert with the Philharmonia. Reassembling that vast epic wouldn't be possible under present circumstances. Read more... |
Bostridge, CBSO, Seal, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - large and liveFriday, 11 June 2021
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra believes that its current post-lockdown summer series features the largest orchestra currently performing live in the UK. It’s not an easy claim to verify, and the full string section certainly wasn’t on stage for this matinee performance under the orchestra’s associate conductor Michael Seal. Read more... |
Grosvenor, RSNO, Chan, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall online review - too big for the small screenTuesday, 08 June 2021
By chance, I started watching this streamed concert shortly after hearing a live BBC broadcast of the Philharmonia playing in front of an audience for the first time in over a year. Read more... |
Dark Days, Luminous Nights, Manchester Collective, The White Hotel, Salford review - a sense of HadesTuesday, 08 June 2021
Did you wonder what all those creative musicians and artists did when they couldn’t perform in public last winter? Some of them started making films. Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
Landscapers, Sky Atlantic review - Olivia Colman and David T...
In 2014, Susan and Christopher Edwards were jailed for a minimum of 25 years for the...
You Don't Know Me, BBC One review - true love meets inn...
I sympathised with the prosecuting barrister when she put it to the...
Semenchuk, Skigin, Wigmore Hall review - compelling Tchaikov...
This winter's evening spent at Wigmore Hall, completely immersed in performances of songs by Tchaikovsky, was a delight.
Mezzo-soprano...
Shagged. Married. Annoyed. Live, O2 Arena review - popular p...
The lengthy ovation Chris and Rosie Ramsey received when they walked on stage at the...
Album: Various Artists - A Damaged Christmas Gift For You
Christmas albums can traditionally be slippery beasts with a whole host of quality control issues. This is not unlike the compilation albums that...
MacMillan Christmas Oratorio, LPO, Elder, RFH review – a new...
The shadow of the cross falls over James MacMillan’s manger. You may come for his work’s consoling, even transporting, beauty and mystery. It’s...
Measure for Measure, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - this pro...
Measure for Measure may be the quintessential Shakespeare “problem” play, but just what has earned it that epithet remains a puzzle. Each...
Hanslip, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Stoller Hall, Mancheste...
Manchester’s oldest chamber orchestra has been gathering a new audience at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music since that auditorium...
Antony Sher: 'I discovered I could be other people...
The energy of Antony Sher, who has died at the age of 72,...
Album: SJS - The Unlikely Event
Just as love's downward spiral can deconstruct a lover's sense of self, so SJS's plangent post-modern prog deconstructs itself as it ebbs and...