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…
Year: 2025
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…
Proms 2025: Boulez and Mahler’s Das klagende Lied
For my generation, as well as for me personally, Pierre Boulez’s Mahler was probably the most influential of all. My Mahlerian coming of age coincided with his decisive return to…
Proms 2025: An Unremarkable Mahler Resurrection from the Hallé and Kahchun Wong
The Singaporean-born conductor Kahchun Wong is certainly a fascinating one based on this performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. A winner of the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition (2016), where he conducted…
Proms 2025: Berio’s Sinfonia in a compelling performance with the CBSO and Kazuki Yamada
Is Berio’s Sinfonia a masterpiece, or a work of its time that today seems outdated? Written in 1968 during a time of revolution it is not in itself a work…
Blenda by Per August Ölander
Interested in operas that have rarely if ever traveled beyond their linguistic or ethnic homeland? You may well be delighted to get to know this Romantic-era work by the Swedish…
Heinrich Marschner’s Once-Famous Hans Heiling Gets a Fine New Recording
Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861) was one of many nineteenth-century composers in the German-speaking lands who tried to create a tradition of serious German opera, distinct from tradition of Singspiel (mostly light…
Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in Bayreuth
The first two of this fourth edition of the 2022 Bayreuth Ring des Nibelungen, staged by Valentin Schwarz, with the understanding that the Bayreuth Festival mounts a new Ring every…
Canto Vocal Programs Hosts A Romantic Evening With “The Love Concert”
Mere hours after the wonderful morning outreach performance last Saturday, the singers of Canto Virginia 2025 performed a larger, more formal concert with the theme of love. Canto Vocal Programs…