Barbican
Imagining Ireland, Barbican review - celebrating the Irish in EnglandFriday, 01 February 2019
Last spring, Imagining Ireland took a fresh, shamrock-free look at contemporary Ireland’s cultural scene, with spoken word and alt-folk mixing with indie rock and jazz, classical, gospel and rap, with the line-up led by Bell X1’s Paul Noonan and... Read more... |
Damrau, BRSO, Jansons, Barbican review - broad and passionate StraussMonday, 28 January 2019
There is no doubting Diana Damrau’s star power. She is not a demonstrative performer, and her voice is small, but the sheer character of her tone, and the passion she invests, make every line special. She is not one to over-sentimentalise either, so... Read more... |
Ehnes, BBCSO, Ryan Wigglesworth, Barbican review - a concert of two very different halvesSaturday, 19 January 2019
The big news on this programme was Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande. This early score, completed in 1903, is a sprawling Expressionist tone poem, making explicit all the passions in Maeterlinck’s play that Debussy only implies. The story plays out... Read more... |
Murrihy, Britten Sinfonia, Elder, Barbican review – a country feastFriday, 18 January 2019
As the January chill began to bite around the Barbican, Sir Mark Elder and the Britten Sinfonia summoned memories of spring and summer – but of sunny seasons overshadowed by the electric crackle of storms. On the face of it, they offered us a... Read more... |
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - Bartók dances, Bruckner singsTuesday, 15 January 2019
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony: few other conductors could get away with programming two such monolithic works, but Simon Rattle has a lightness of touch that can leaven even the weightiest musical... Read more... |
Mutter, Vengerov, Argerich, Oxford Philharmonic, Papadopoulos, Barbican review - a birthday banquetMonday, 14 January 2019
When three of the planet’s starriest soloists take the time to celebrate the anniversary of a young, non-metropolitan orchestra, it may seem perverse to leave the hall entranced most by the one work in which the illustrious trio played no part. Of... Read more... |
Hannigan, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - the sublime and the beautifulFriday, 11 January 2019
With the London Symphony Orchestra often playing like some commanding and relentless force of nature, Sir Simon Rattle steered two mighty avalanches of Nordic sound into a concert of granitic authority last night. However, I suspect that many people... Read more... |
L'enfance du Christ, BBCSO, Gardner, Barbican review - Berlioz's kindest wonderTuesday, 18 December 2018
Like the fountains that sprang up in the desert during the Holy Family's flight into Egypt - according to a charming episode in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew - Berlioz's new-found creativity in the 1850s flowed from a couple of bars of organ music he... Read more... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor, RSC, Barbican review - panto ShakespeareThursday, 13 December 2018
For those of us who have never thought much before about links between pantomime and Shakespeare, Fiona Laird’s new Merry Wives offers a chance to see how the combination works. Making short shrift of tradition, her version of the Falstaff comedy... Read more... |
Candide, LSO, Alsop, Barbican review - nearly the best of all possible...Monday, 10 December 2018
When the biggest laugh in Bernstein’s Candide goes to a narrator’s mention of how nationalism was sweeping through Europe, you may have a problem. Still, the Bernstein Centenary has been among the best of all possible anniversary celebrations this... Read more... |
Bostridge, Pappano, Barbican review - a tough but thrilling march across the battlefieldThursday, 06 December 2018
Seldom has an encore felt so welcome. With Sir Antonio Pappano as his accompanist at the Barbican, Ian Bostridge tugged us through the mill of industrialised slaughter and the psychic devastation it leaves in an ambitious programme of song sequences... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican review - rethought masterpiece, stolid rarityFriday, 16 November 2018
Forget the latest International Tchaikovsky Competition winner (I almost have; only a dim memory of Dmitry Masleev's playing the notes in the obligatory First Piano Concerto, and nothing else, remains from an Istanbul performance). Had Pavel... Read more... |
