It’s hard to believe live performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony – the longest symphony in the standard repertoire – only began life in the UK in 1961 when a performance…
Year: 2025
Pocket-sized Wagner: Grimeborn Opera’s Tristan und Isolde
Much has been written about Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and for various reasons. It is one of the most compelling love stories of all time, with roots stretching back to…
Mango Street Under Construction at Glimmerglass
For its landmark Fiftieth Anniversary Season, the Glimmerglass Festival is to be heartily commended for commissioning a bold new work, The House on Mango Street, by composer Derek Bermel, who also…
Proms 2025: Aigul Akhmetshina soars in Ravel’s Shéhérazade
In its single contribution to this year’s promenade concerts, the London Philharmonic Orchestra took us to exotic and faraway regions, as far from the Albert Hall as one could imagine.…
Revolutionary Rake at Glimmerglass
If you were expecting a Hogarth-pretty version of Igor Stravinsky, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s The Rake’s Progress at the renowned Glimmerglass Festival, you were at the wrong address. For…
Vintage Sondheim in Upstate New York
For its annual American musical presentation, Glimmerglass Festival lovingly staged a scintillating production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. It is hard to believe…
Glimmerglass Tosca: A Daring Leap
To open its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, Glimmerglass Festival opted for a reliable potboiler, Puccini’s Tosca, but with a contemporary twist. Rather than setting it in its scripted time period of…
Proms 2025: Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin
Memories of Pierre Boulez continue to hover over this year’s Proms like a spectre at the feast. My first encounter with Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin – his masterpiece, in my…
Proms 2025: Beethoven & Bartók
Music of life-affirming vigour, then chilling intensity was the focus of this curious juxtaposition from the Budapest Festival Orchestra under its founding director Iván Fischer. The unalloyed joy of Beethoven’s…
Fine musical performances redeem this revival of Glyndebourne’s Kátya Kabanová
A winged angel, multiple birdcages and confining walls of brilliant white dominate this symbol-heavy staging of Kátya Kabanová, a production first unveiled by Damiano Michieletto at Glyndebourne in 2021. A few…