The Swingles, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – austere Stravinsky, luminous Berio

Year-long Stravinsky festival wraps up with a diverse sixties showcase

The London Philharmonic’s year-long Stravinsky festival, Changing Faces, concluded here in spectacular style, with a tribute to “The Swingling Sixties”. Vladimir Jurowski, the soon to be leaving – and soon to be much-missed, Principal Conductor of the LPO, devised an adventurous and innovative programme, pairing Stravinsky’s late masterpiece Threni with the contemporaneous Sinfonia of Berio.

Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – three iconic works

★★★★★ HALLÉ, ELDER, BRIDGEWATER HALL, MANCHESTER Three iconic works

An ear-stretching showpiece – and more – with glorious playing

At first sight, performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – premiered in 1913 and sometimes seen as presaging the whole world of modernism – in the centenary year of the 1918 Armistice might seem to be lagging behind in timing (if centenaries float your boat).

Two-Piano Marathon, Kings Place review - dazzling duos, deep waters

Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy make a transcendental start to an epic evening

You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly planned by Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen, and the baton passed seamlessly from two pairs of hands to the next.

The Rake's Progress, British Youth Opera review - perfect poise in slippery Stravinsky

★★★★ THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, BRITISH YOUTH OPERA Perfect poise in slippery Stravinsky

Well-trained young singers have space to articulate skewed morality tale

So it's been sellouts for half-baked if well-cast productions of The Rake's Progress and now Britten's Paul Bunyan at Wilton's Music Hall, while British Youth Opera's classy Stravinsky in the admittedly larger Peacock Theatre, several hundred yards away from the Hogarth Rake paintings in Sir John Soane's Museum, played to a half-empty house, last night, at least.

Prom 45, Capuçon, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Nott - scintillating new era for Swiss magicians

★★★★PROM 45, CAPUCON, ORCHESTRE DE LA SUISSE ROMANDE. NOTT Scintillating new era for Swiss magicians - Geneva gives us the Ansermet tradition plus

Top British artistic director in Geneva gives us the Ansermet tradition plus

Who is the greatest British conductor in charge of a major orchestra? It's subjective, but my answer is not what you might expect. Jonathan Nott has done all his major work so far on the continent. He left the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in excellent shape to another of the world's best, Jakub Hrůša; and now he is, as we learned from two long-term players in the Proms Plus talk, liked and respected across the board at the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

Classical CDs Weekly: Sverre Indris Joner, John McLeod, Poulenc, Stravinsky

CLASSICAL CDS WEEKLY Sverre Indris Joner, John McLeod, Poulenc and Stravinsky under the microscope

Norwegian tango, new Scottish orchestral music and a classic Stravinsky disc returns from the vaults

 

Con cierto toque de tangoSverre Indris Joner: Con cierto toque de tango Henning Kraggerud (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Sverre Indris Joner, with Tango for 3 (Lawo Classics)