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.…
Category: Reviews
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…
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Is Berio’s Sinfonia a masterpiece, or a work of its time that today seems outdated?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…