Sydney Carter’s Lord of the Dance might well act as the individual watchword for this concert given by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner which inaugurated a short Southbank…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
Bach’s St John Passion with the AAM at the Barbican
How to approach the St John Passion? Certainly, I feel lucky to have experienced two proportions of epic power in recent years: Masaaki Suzuki and the Collegium Musicum Japan in…
Sparkling performances from Hurn Court Opera’s La Cenerentola
Bitter-sweet comedy of manners, happy-ever-after romance, or a serious moral tale, Rossini’s 1817 stage work is open to various interpretative slants, some even sinisterly dark. But, however you pigeon-hole this…
A curious combination of Schnittke, Shostakovich and Brahms: Lisa Batiashvili, Gianadrea Noseda and the LSO
In German there is only one word (Schicksal) to cover the twin ideas of Providence watching over you in pursuit of higher things (destiny) and the workings of malign supernatural…
Chelsea Opera Group thrillingly reveal the wonderful score of Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys
For all that Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys (premiered in 1888) has scarcely maintained any foothold in the operatic repertoire in modern times, it packs quite a punch, both for its…
Boulez at 100: Pli selon pli at the Barbican
The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth might well bring with it many performances of his works but perhaps none will be quite so breathtaking in the UK as this one…
A blazing Verdi Requiem: Riccardo Muti and the Philharmonia
It has been 15 years since Riccardo Muti last returned to the Philharmonia Orchestra, and very much longer since he last conducted Verdi’s Requiem with them, so this concert should…
Death stalks the land: Joyce DiDonato in Schubert’s Winterreise
How much suffering can the human soul endure? When does increasing unhappiness turn into utter despair and the desire to employ the ultimate weapon of self-destruction? The Romantic era in…
Superlative Performances from Vache Baroque at Magdalen College, Oxford
As part of the Music in Oxford series, the award-winning music ensemble Vache Baroque produced an artfully conceived programme built around Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis letter of 1897, written during…
Barbara Hannigan at the Barbican (II)
The second of Barbara Hannigan’s two March LSO concerts opened with a UK premiere: Golfam Khayam’s Je ne suis pas une fable à conter, which Hannigan commissioned and has already…