Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals, Metamorphic Variations BBC Philharmonic/Michael Seal (Chandos)We are coming towards the end of the year marking 50 years since the death of Arthur Bliss, and I’m pleased to have covered a number of live performances and recordings that have exposed some underexposed music. The latest of these is a recording pairing his ballet Miracle in the Gorbals, a big success in its time, and the expansive Metamorphic Variations, played by the BBC Philharmonic under Michael Seal.This was Bliss’s 1944 follow-up to his hit ballet Checkmate of 1937. Where the latter was a Read more ...

Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26 season at the Bridgewater Hall. One was “Fountain of Youth” (the programme title and also that of Julia Wolfe’s nine-minute work that began its orchestral content) and the other “Grasping pain, embracing fate” (used as a kind of strapline).Given that the latter phrase must have been meant to reflect something in the music, I was wondering – and still am – where pain came into it. Perhaps it was actually a reference to the pre-concert show: Read more ...

Tired after a hard day at the office? You might think you need a Classic FM-style warm bath, but the blast of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony, one of the noisiest in the repertoire, is the real ticket to recharging the batteries. Gianandrea Noseda, on the latest stage of his bracing journey through the composer’s symphonies and embracing the London Symphony Orchestra’s hugely popular Half Six Fix series, served it up with panache both in word and deed.The sweetener was the overture the 23-year-old Schubert furnished both for a “magic play with music”, Die Zauberharfe (no harp in the orchestra Read more ...

A showstopper for starters followed by dark depths, a quirky compilation after the interval: it’s what you might expect from Iván Fischer and his 42-year-old Budapest Festival Orchestra. All Prokofiev, too: the sort of thing we used to get from Valery Gergiev and visiting Petersburgers. Yet while Gergiev’s alliance with Putin means he’ll not be here again, Fischer has balanced criticising Orbán and keeping his Hungarian orchestra on the road.The nominal star soloist was Igor Levit, one of the few pianists in the world up to the colossal demands of Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, but as Read more ...

 Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 1, Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy Alexandre Kantorow (piano) (BIS)I’d previously encountered pianist Alexandre Kantorow via his exuberant set of Saint-Saëns piano concertos, sparky, lovable performances conducted by his father Jean-Jacques. This solo disc contains weightier repertoire but the Kantorow’s elucidatory abilities prevent things ever getting oppressive; if there’s a more accessible reading of Brahms’s Op. 1 Piano Sonata on disc, I’ve not heard it. Questions of technique don’t arise here, and unless you follow with a score it’s easy to forget how Read more ...

Chief conductor John Storgårds’ first programme of 2024 in the Bridgewater Hall was notable for the visit of Christian Tetzlaff as violin soloist, but perhaps a little puzzling in the choice of Thomas Adès’ Violin Concerto as the vehicle for his talents.The concerto, sub-titled “Concentric Paths”, is a fascinating piece of orchestral composition but not the most obvious opportunity for a star soloist to engage his audience. And Bridgewater Hall attenders can hear Adès conducted by Adès in the Hallé’s series, too, now that he’s in post as artist-in-residence with them for two seasons.Maybe we Read more ...

 Bach: Goldberg Variations Víkingur Ólafsson (piano) (DG)Bach Goldberg Variations Reimagined Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque (Channel Classics)It feels like ages since I’ve listened to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I’m more team piano than team harpsichord, so my current favourites include recordings by Glenn Gould (both of them), Murray Perahia and Igor Levit. Víkingur Ólafsson’s lucid sleeve note is entertaining, particularly when he follows his florid comparison of the work to “…a grand oak tree… living and vibrant, its forms both responsive and regenerative…” with Bach’s punchier Read more ...

Conversation just before this concert started concerned Verdi’s Il trovatore and the truism that it needs “the four greatest voices in the world”. Whether or not the quartets we heard by Mozart, Prokofiev and Brahms demand the same in string terms, they all hit breathtaking levels of humanity, thanks to the singing interaction of the Jerusalems, the peerless chamber music equivalent of the Berlin Philharmonic.Never has Mozart’s D major Quartet K575 sounded more like one of his great comic (or semicomic) operas, with only passing shadows like the sudden unison gruffness of the Menuetto. The Read more ...

The urge to redesign a heritage ballet is a curious one, given not just the expense but the fact that the main draw of an old ballet is the steps and the music, which stay the same whatever the stage dressing. The Royal Ballet was keen, however, to mark the 75th anniversary of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella with a new look, and apparently found no shortage of private sponsors who felt the same. This was after all the first three-act ballet to be made in Britain, and had been out of the repertory for a decade. So Cinderella, a story about transformation, has itself been transformed, most Read more ...

You can brush aside any problems septuagenarian pianists may have in the toughest repertoire, especially if they give you more than glimpses of why they’re legends in the first place. Those were frequent from the masterly Dmitri Alexeev, long inclined to prefer passing on wisdom to a new generation of pianists as Professor at the Royal College of Music and in his other home in Rieti over the treadmill of recital giving.This was Alexeev's only London recital this season. Enriched by the extraordinary surroundings of the newly-restored Leighton House, and the fine acoustics of the big studio Read more ...

There’s life in the old overture-concerto-symphony format yet – especially if the conductor not only shapes every phrase but takes care over the number of string players needed for each work, the soloist lives every bar of a concerto you thought you knew inside out, and the symphony is a relatively rare neighbour to another regularly on concert programmes.It would be foolhardy to claim that Prokofiev’s Sixth, his symphony of suffering, is better than the ever-fascinating Fifth, no straightforward warhorse, but it’s certainly more consistently dark and deep. The London Symphony Orchestra has Read more ...

It does need saying: the RPO may receive less frequent plaudits than some of their London peers, but this is a fine and wonderfully responsive orchestra with a distinctive character.The string sections have a natural opulence and warmth in their sound and always work with an impressive unanimity of purpose right through to the back desks. The wind are blessed with characterful and persuasive principal players, plus that strong feel of a unified section. The brass rarely, if ever put a foot wrong. And the first group that Vasily Petrenko asked to rise to their feet at the end of last night’s Read more ...