Mendelssohn: Symphonies 1-5, Overtures, A Midsummer Night’s Dream London Symphony Orchestra/Sir John Eliot Gardiner (LSO Live)That Mendelssohn wrote five symphonies is widely known, though I'd wager that 99% of listeners only know 40% of them. Begin with the rarely-played Symphony No. 1, written when Mendelssohn was 14. Though his precocity is engaging rather than irritating; this is an impressive symphony on its own terms, and not purely because it was written by someone barely out of short trousers. The third movement sounds a little familiar, and then you discover that it's a Read more ...

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 inscribed in a friend's visitors book. That became the Shepherd's Farewell to Mary, Joseph and Jesus as they depart from Bethlehem, loveliest of all Christmas carols; then Berlioz added two movements around it, and later two low-level dramatic sequences either side of "The Flight into Egypt" (the scene pictured below by Carpaccio). The triptych - Read more ...

How do you make your mark in a crucial last week after the Olympian spectaculars of Kirill Petrenko's Proms with the Berlin Philharmonic? Well, for a start, you stay true to recent principles by getting as many of your period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique players as can manage it on their feet – Gardiner did it earlier this year in selected items on his mostly-Schumann programmes with the LSO – to dive headlong into the spume of Berlioz's Le Corsaire Overture. Throw in two charismatic soloists, plan special spatial effects that make dramatic sense, and have your orchestra Read more ...

 Shostakovich: Symphonies 4 &11 Boston Symphony Orchestra/Andris Nelsons (DG)Shostakovich's 4th Symphony was famously withdrawn before its 1936 premiere, the composer wisely recognising that this violent, sprawling work might not do his reputation much good. Eventually performed eight years after Stalin’s death, it's a fabulous listening experience but not something you feel like returning to very often. Andris Nelsons’ new live version is brilliant, but you might need a few Poulenc CDs on hand to cheer yourself up afterwards. Shostakovich's opening march has terrifying energy here, Read more ...

Violins, violas, wind and brass all standing for Schumann: gimmick or gain? As John Eliot Gardiner told the audience with his usual eloquence while chairs were being brought on for the Berlioz in the first half of last night's concert, Mendelssohn set the trend as conductor with Leipzig's Gewandhausorchester - though as I understand it, only the violins stood - and some chamber orchestras of comparable size have adopted the practice. But Gardiner didn't need to reason the need; we'd just heard it at work in Schumann's Genoveva Overture - a brighter, more vibrant sound than usual from the Read more ...

Edward Gardner was back on familiar ground when he conducted in Manchester last night – his high-profile career began when he was appointed as the Hallé’s first-ever assistant conductor, early in Sir Mark Elder’s era – and his rapport with young audiences and ability to command his players has certainly not diminished.His five-item programme (part of the BBC Philharmonic’s “Journey Through Music”, designed to relate to younger listeners) blew the cobwebs away if any were remaining from the winter break. It was brisk, brash and exciting – a style of music-making the Philharmonic is not always Read more ...

"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full). "Dvořák Symphony No. 8" was in fact the headline, marking the launch of Robin Ticciati's last series as the SCO's hugely successful Principal Conductor. As it turned out, Berlioz's early Overture Les Francs-Juges offered the real shake-up of the evening, the shock of the new as good as a contemporary work – better than most instances – with an unusual complement for Read more ...

For his monster concerts in 1840s Paris, Berlioz took pride in assembling and marshalling a "great beast of an orchestra". At the Barbican on Sunday night, the LSO filled the stage and fitted the bill. Their thoroughbred tradition of Berlioz performance, long nurtured by the late Sir Colin Davis, looks set fair to be renewed by Sir Simon Rattle. Just as they had done last week in a remarkable survey of modern English music to open his tenure as music director, they gave him everything in La Damnation de Faust.Cramped acoustic be damned: there was playing here of unabashed violence, backed up Read more ...

The road to hell is paved with brilliant ideas in Berlioz's idiosyncratic take on the Faust legend. John Eliot Gardiner proved better than anyone in last night's Prom that this splendidly lopsided "dramatic legend" can only be weakened by its many stagings; all the drama is in the music, and especially in the orchestra, from rollicking country dances and fanfaring Hungarians through to the shrieking night birds on the ride to the abyss and the six harps dappling the plains of heaven in what for modern tastes is a quite unnecessary "Epilogue in Heaven" for redeemed Marguerite.Gardiner is a Read more ...

It’s at times like this that I give thanks for the Proms. Who else would (or could) have put together a programme pairing Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique with an 18th-century sonic fantasy, or topped it off with a substantial UK premiere? A bit bonkers on the page, it remained so in performance. But the dramatic logic was absolutely sound; forget a stroll in the Swiss Alps or on Italian hillsides, these were musical journeys of a more primal kind, tugging at the thread of the human psyche and following it down to its darkest depths.Hell, according to a certain French authority, may be “other Read more ...

The world premiere of a symphony by a British composer – Huw Watkins – was the chief attraction in the latest Hallé programme with Sir Mark Elder at the Bridgewater Hall. The other music on the programme, however, held interest and indeed created a foil to Watkins’ work.But first to his Symphony. Anyone looking for a contribution to a perceived “tradition” of British symphony writing would be hard put to place this one. It is of itself: one of a kind. Granted, it’s written for a fairly conventional large orchestra, but with nothing to frighten the horses in sound effect terms. Watkins can Read more ...

John Adams, greatest communicator among living front-rank composers, zoomed into the follow-spot for the second and third concerts of the New York Philharmonic's Barbican mini-residency. Harmonielehre, his first epic symphony in all but name, and The Chairman Dances, preliminary study for the nostalgic-cum-violent foxtrot of the Maos in Act Three of Nixon in China, are already repertoire staples, while Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra is about to become one; this was its third performance in London since 2013. Even so, the spotlighting was bold for a high-profile tour, Read more ...