Barbican
Grosvenor, Filarmonica della Scala, Chailly, Barbican review - Tchaikovsky’s force of destiny shines brightThursday, 25 January 2018
You could probably guess from the assembling audience that the orchestra making its Barbican debut last night came from Milan. That many mink coats rarely congregate in a London concert hall. And under the baton of its music director Riccardo... Read more... |
BBCSO, Pons, Barbican review - love hurts in vivid Spanish double billSaturday, 20 January 2018
This was an evening of Iberian highways re-travelled, but with a difference. At the beginning of 2016, the centenary of Spanish master Enrique Granados's untimely death, two young pianists at the National Gallery shared the two piano suites that... Read more... |
Kožená, LSO, Rattle, Barbican Hall review – springing surprises from Schubert and RameauFriday, 12 January 2018
Cheers and huzzahs greeted the arrival of Sir Simon Rattle on the Barbican stage last night before the London Symphony Orchestra had even played a note. The 10-day festivities to open his tenure as principal conductor evidently worked a treat. The... Read more... |
Komsi, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican Hall review - Sibelius series ends in gloryMonday, 08 January 2018
Twelfth Night, Epiphany, call it what you will, is one reminder that there's continuity after the turn of the year. Another was Sakari Oramo's final Sibelius-plus concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra - a predictable triumph given that the... Read more... |
Breaking the Rules, LSO St Luke's review – music and murder with GesualdoMonday, 08 January 2018
The “concert drama” is on the up, offering audiences a mingled-genre means to experience music and its context simultaneously. The author and singer Clare Norburn has an absolute peach of a story to tell in the "imagined testimony of Carlo Gesualdo... Read more... |
Best of 2017: Classical concertsWednesday, 27 December 2017
Did Simon Rattle's return to the UK as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra live up to the hype? Mostly, and when it did, the music-making was superbly alive. But it's vital to observe that another orchestra and chief conductor have... Read more... |
Titus Andronicus, RSC, Barbican review - blood will outWednesday, 20 December 2017
Live theatre, eh? It had to happen. On press night a sound of what seemed to be snoring (the production’s really not dull) revealed, in the Barbican stalls, a collapse. About an hour in, a huge amount of blood is smeared over Titus Andronicus’s... Read more... |
Zimerman, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - a diverse Bernstein centenarySunday, 17 December 2017
Leonard Bernstein is 100 already. Actually, he’s not – his centenary falls in 2018, but the LSO, an orchestra he conducted many times, is building up to the anniversary with a series of concerts featuring his three symphonies. This performance of... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, RSC, Barbican review - rising grandeurWednesday, 13 December 2017
Is there a key to “infinite variety”? The challenge of Cleopatra is to convey the sheer fullness of the role, the sense that it defines, and is defined by only itself: there’s no saying that the glorious tragedy of the closing plays itself out, of... Read more... |
Salonen conducts Sibelius, RFH/Oramo conducts Salonen, Barbican review - Finnish psychedeliaMonday, 11 December 2017
After Sakari Oramo's dazzling Sibelius rattlebag with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the centenary day of Finnish independence, things weren't looking so good for Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia at half time last Thursday (★★★). Then along... Read more... |
Johnston, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - sheer adrenalin in early SibeliusThursday, 07 December 2017
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. He tried... Read more... |
Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - electricity in Sibelius and HillborgThursday, 30 November 2017
Even given the peerless standards already set by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their Sibelius cycle, this instalment was always going to be the toughest, featuring the most elusive of the symphonies, the Sixth, and the sparest, the... Read more... |
