Although John Cage’s Seven Haiku for piano are all about chance and accident, this final concert in Ian Bostridge’s Ancient and Modern series was a masterpiece of meticulous planning and execution.
Author: Anne Ozorio
Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Daniel Barenboim, BBC Prom 18
Few composers seem as remote and yet as necessary to our age as Beethoven, and perhaps the symphonic Beethoven in particular. Irony is a foreign word to him; blazing affirmation and indeed intensity of struggle seem too much for us.
Pierre Boulez : Le marteau sans maÓtre BBC Proms
Pierre Boulez Le marteau sans maÓtre is important as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, says conductor FranÁois-Xavier Roth, who conducted it with members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in BBC Prom 17.
Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens (concert performance, BBC Proms)
Hearing The Trojans in concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms was, for me at least, a much happier experience than when it laboured under the crowd-pleasing would-be-musical-comedy served up by David McVicar’s production for the Royal Opera.
Rossini Il viaggio a Reims, Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists programme is celebrating the 10th anniversary of their annual Summer Performance.
Les Troyens, Royal Opera House London
A sensational Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House, London. Berlioz, who understood theatrical gestures so well, builds his opera around the most audacious dramatic device in ancient history: the Trojan Horse.
Miah Persson, Wigmore Hall
At the Wigmore Hall, there’s long been a tradition of Swedish song. We’ve heard many of the greats, Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbara Bonney and others. Miah Persson and Roger Vignoles are in this constellation.
Oliver Knussen’s Sendak operas launch the Aldeburgh Music festival
Oliver Knussen’s two operas based on books by Maurice Sendak opened this year’s Aldeburgh Music Festival in exuberant style.
Laurent Pelly on Glyndebourne’s Ravel Double Bill
The Glyndebourne Festival highlight this year could be the Ravel double bill – L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilËges. Laurent Pelly directs. Anyone who saw his brilliant Humperdinck Hansel und Gretel at Glyndebourne in 2008 will know what to expect – a staging of great imagination and verve, true to the spirit of the composer.