LSO
La Damnation de Faust, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - infernal dynamiteMonday, 18 September 2017
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... Read more... |
Tetzlaff, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - a triumphant homecoming for the maestroFriday, 15 September 2017
After all the talk and anticipation, at last some music. Simon Rattle took up the reins of the London Symphony Orchestra last night – as its first ever “Music Director” – with a programme dedicated to home-grown composers whose lives span the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dutilleux, Dvořák, Ravel, TchaikovskySaturday, 26 August 2017
Dvořák: Symphony No 9, Sibelius: Finlandia Chineke! Orchestra/Kevin John Edusei (Signum)These live performances mark the recording debut of the Chineke! Orchestra, an ensemble created by bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku to provide opportunities for BME... Read more... |
Prom 46 review: Gurrelieder, LSO, Rattle - gorgeous colours, halting movement in Schoenberg's monsterpieceSunday, 20 August 2017
From sunset to sunrise, across aeons of time, usually flashes by in Schoenberg's polystylistic epic. Not last night at the Proms: Simon Rattle is too much in love with the sounds he can get from the London Symphony Orchestra - here verging on a... Read more... |
Kozhukhin, LSO, Rattle, BarbicanThursday, 13 July 2017
Gorgeous sound, shame about the movement – or lack of it. That seems to be the problem with too many of Simon Rattle's interpretations of late romantic music. It gave us a sclerotic Wagner Tristan und Isolde Prelude last night, Karajanesque and not... Read more... |
LSO, Haitink, BarbicanTuesday, 30 May 2017
Bernard Haitink is one of the great Bruckner conductors of our time. His interpretations are expansive yet vivid and always go straight to the heart of the music. But he is also an old man, and physical frailty is increasingly inhibiting his work,... Read more... |
Tamestit, LSO, Roth, BarbicanMonday, 24 April 2017
François-Xavier Roth is a distinctive presence at the podium. He is short and immaculately attired, and first appearances could lead you to expect a civilised and uneventful evening. But the facade soon drops. His movements are brisk and erratic, as... Read more... |
Trpčeski, LSO, Roth, BarbicanFriday, 31 March 2017
In musical performance, if you get the start right and the end right, you can get away with a lot in between. In last night’s LSO concert under François-Xavier Roth there was a mixed bag of more and less successful beginnings and endings, but lots... Read more... |
Kaufmann, Mattila, LSO, Pappano, BarbicanThursday, 09 February 2017
Jonas Kaufmann’s legion of admirers could rest content. A well-received Lieder evening last week demonstrated that the world’s hottest tenor property had returned, both to London for a three-concert residency at the Barbican, and indeed to singing... Read more... |
LSO, Rattle, BarbicanFriday, 20 January 2017
Symphony is a word carrying heavy historical baggage. It’s understandable when composers dig for inspiration elsewhere. All the same, Mark-Anthony Turnage has grasped the symphonic nettle with Remembering – In memoriam Evan Scofield which received... Read more... |
Le Grand Macabre, LSO, Rattle, BarbicanSunday, 15 January 2017
The Big Mac – as in Ligeti's music-theatre fantasia on the possible death of Death – is here to stay. Back in 1990, three critics (I was one) were invited on to the BBC World Service to say which work from the previous decade we thought... Read more... |
Josefowicz, LSO, Adams, BarbicanFriday, 09 December 2016
Praise be to the spell cast by top players on great composers. Without the phenomenon that is Leila Josefowicz, John Adams would never have created his often prolix, fitfully hair-raising Scheherazade.2, more "dramatic symphony" for violin and... Read more... |
