What sort of music might capture the enigmatic nihilism of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame? The play’s fragmentation and dislocation? Its seemingly pointless patterns of repetition and variation? György Kurtág’s aphoristic stutters,…
Category: Reviews
Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre gets its Proms premiere with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra
The Budapest Festival Orchestra are a crack ensemble. And under Iván Fischer they can do everything that is possible – and nearly anything impossible, too. They brought with them to…
To Sing of Love: VOCES8 – LIVE from London Summer 2023
VOCES8’s LIVE From London Summer 2023 festival feels a bit mis-named – but that’s only because the nine concerts which form this summer’s online festival, which runs from 12th August…
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey inspires magnificent performances of two Ligeti masterpieces at the Proms
Film music has long been a theme of classical concerts – although this sold-out concert given by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner was just a little different. It…
Trouble in Tahiti at the Arcola Theatre
Ned Rorem described works such as Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (1952) as ‘Broadway operas’: a fusion of opera, music theatre and tv sitcom. There’s obviously a lot of edgy…
Ruddigore at Opera Holland Park
Ruddigore has always had a problematic status in the G&S canon. Following hot on the heels of The Mikado, its premiere in 1887 was met with catcalls and jeers. Some…
Santa Fe Rusalka: Freudian Slip-up
Santa Fe Opera staged another local premiere this summer with the welcome company addition of Antonín Dvořák and Jaroslav Kvapil’s splendid opera, Rusalka, directed by the acclaimed Sir David Pountney.…
Enigmatic Debussy Riches in New Mexico
Santa Fe Opera is to be applauded for including Debussy’s inscrutable masterpiece, Pelléas and Mélisande in this summer’s festival season. This important work is more admired than loved, and a…
Barry Kosky’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites travels from Glyndebourne to the Proms
Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites retells the true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne who were executed on 17th July 1794, during the French Revolution, for refusing to comply…
Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha brings an iridescent glow to Strauss’s Four Last Songs at the Proms
Copland, Hindemith and Strauss are not obvious bedfellows. However, the focus on the 1940s from either side of the Atlantic made perfect sense for this annual Prom appearance of the…