LSO
MacMillan premiere, Repin, LSO, Gergiev, Barbican HallThursday, 13 May 2010
"There is not one idea," wrote that intemperate critic Eduard Hanslick about Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel, "that does not get its neck broken by the speed with which the next lands on its head." Rather a compliment, I've always thought, and... Read more... |
LSO, Davis, Uchida, Barbican HallSaturday, 08 May 2010
Communists had taken over the Acropolis, Britain faced a hung parliament and in the 20 minutes it took me to get down to the Barbican by bus the US stock market had fallen more sharply than at any time since 1987. In the face of global and political... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Pappano, Barbican HallThursday, 29 April 2010
It didn’t take long for memories of Anatoly Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake to fade in the dramatic shift Stateside which dominated Antonio Pappano’s latest outing with the London Symphony Orchestra. Every tone fleetingly shimmered as Liadov’s dreamy... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Ticciati, Barbican HallFriday, 26 March 2010
It’s a very assured - not to say very brave - young conductor who chooses to make his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’ notoriously challenging Seventh Symphony. Mighty talents have fallen at this particular fence, defeated by... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 12 March 2010
Adams began with two Debussy preludes swept by a different kind of wind in Colin Matthews's ingenious, luminous orchestrations. Well, windswept was the idea, but there was no more elemental scouring here than by all accounts there had been in the... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallMonday, 08 March 2010
What would you imagine the composer John Adams might choose to conduct – apart, that is, from a little something he himself made earlier? Well, the first of two London Symphony Orchestra concerts this week brought no big surprises: Sibelius’ Sixth... Read more... |
Nitin Sawhney and LSO, Yogoto No Yume, BarbicanMonday, 01 March 2010
When I last met Nitin Sawhney, I’d heard that he was a whizz at mental arithmetic. I asked him, perhaps impertinently, what was 91 times 94? “8,827,” he relied, quick as a flash. Several hours later, I worked out he was probably right. “Vedic... Read more... |
Philip Glass: Satyagraha, ENO/ LSO, Alsop, BarbicanThursday, 25 February 2010
It has always been a cornerstone of my personal philosophy that beauty and insight can be found in the very lowest of common denominators. That Big Brother, Friends, Love It magazine or Paris Hilton provide revelations about life that are of as much... Read more... |
When a brass player says he's ill, he's ill...Tuesday, 09 February 2010Singers are always calling in sick. The merest puff of wind can blow a voice into A&E. The tiniest tickle in the throat can leave 2000 people jilted. They build instrumental musicians more robustly, especially brass players, so when David Pyatt... Read more... |
Elektra, Gergiev, LSO, Barbican HallThursday, 14 January 2010
Richard Strauss’s 1909 opera Elektra is a diabolical piece of work - less an opera than an event determined to cut its mark. A vast orchestra of 112 players unleashes a two-hour tsunami of sound across the stage, on which female voices are buffeted... Read more... |
LSO/Tilson Thomas, Goerne, Barbican HallSunday, 08 November 2009
Michael Tilson Thomas’s association with the London Symphony Orchestra runs deep - he was its principal conductor for eight years, and for his latest return to his old band last night the American programmed works that, while they had a Viennese... Read more... |
The Damnation of Faust, Gergiev, Barbican HallWednesday, 23 September 2009The Damnation of Faust is so chock-full of special effects that you half expect a list of technical advisors in place of the single name Hector Berlioz. But it is just he – wizard of his imaginings – who continues to surprise and even shock no... Read more... |
