Southbank Centre
Zehetmair, LPO, Jurowski, RFHTuesday, 18 October 2016
This is how new and modern music should be done. In the London Philharmonic, we had an orchestra well-prepared to meet technical challenges and resolved to making sense from them. Vladimir Jurowski is a conductor who places faith in composers and... Read more... |
Smith, Wyn-Rogers, Philharmonia, Pons, RFHMonday, 17 October 2016
The Philharmonia’s Sunday concert wasn’t quite the event they’d planned. Christoph von Dohnányi scored a hit last season with Schubert's Ninth Symphony, so his reading of the Eighth seemed an ideal way to begin. But Dohnányi withdrew early on,... Read more... |
Krylov, LPO, Søndergård, RFHMonday, 10 October 2016
With a trio of easy-on-the-ear 20th-century works, Thomas Søndergård marked his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A pleasingly full crowd took the opportunity to hear the work of a conductor rarely glimpsed in these parts outside the BBC... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 5, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHFriday, 30 September 2016
The Symphony of Psalms, which ended the Philharmonia’s Stravinsky series last night, is an indelible masterpiece, silencing the tired but persistent accusation that Stravinsky’s music is clever but cold. Abstract it may be, but suffused with an... Read more... |
Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals 4, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFHMonday, 26 September 2016
Stravinsky's music, chameleonic yet always itself, offers so many lines of thought. One struck me immediately with the descending, even harp notes and tender, veiled strings at the start of his 1947 ballet Orpheus last night: the inexorable beat of... Read more... |
Benedetti, LPO, Jurowski, RFHSaturday, 24 September 2016
Vladimir Jurowski began his latest season as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic with a typically bold and adventurous programme. At its core were the two Szymanowski violin concertos performed by Nicola Benedetti, and these were framed... Read more... |
What are the arts doing here?Sunday, 31 July 2016
The raising of a temporary structure theatre in the middle of the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais (pictured below) has brought the issue of arts in situations of crisis into sharp focus. This big brave act by two young Brits, opening a creative... Read more... |
Burt Bacharach, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 05 July 2016
The year 1987 was a notable one in music history. In February, Burt Bacharach won the Grammy for best song with “That’s What Friends Are For”, and two months later Joss Stone was born in England. At the age of 17 Stone would be nominated for three... Read more... |
Götterdämmerung, Opera North, Southbank CentreMonday, 04 July 2016
And so it ends: Hagen drowns, Valhalla burns, and the ring returns to the Rhine, while somewhere beneath – Wagner’s dawn trumpets sounding faintly in the distance – the dwarf Alberich continues his lonely scheming. It would be hard to find a more... Read more... |
Siegfried, Opera North, Southbank CentreSaturday, 02 July 2016
For some of us, Siegfried is a perfect opera. Like L.627 it stubbornly observes the Aristotelian rules of space and time to cut a generous slice of life. There are almost no set-pieces to break the flow of one-on-one conversations, accusations,... Read more... |
Die Walküre, Opera North, Southbank CentreThursday, 30 June 2016
Enter the human - and superhuman demands for at least four of the singers - in the second, towering instalment of Wagner's Ring cycle. It says so much for Opera North's achievement so far that no one fell in any way short of the sometimes insane... Read more... |
Der Freischütz, OAE, Elder, RFHWednesday, 08 June 2016
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is 30 years old, and last night it celebrated in style. The orchestra has a long association with the music of Weber, who became iconic of their pioneering work in presenting 19th-century repertoire on... Read more... |
