Gesualdo Six captivate a full house at St. Cross, Winchester

You can count on the fingers of one hand those a cappella vocal groups within the UK that come close to the finesse of The Gesualdo Six.  In terms of…

Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in memory of Andrew Davis

This was to have been something entirely different: Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, conducted by Andrew Davis. The death of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor led not only to…

Antonio Pappano reveals Puccini’s La rondine in all its sunlit splendour

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” This opening line from chapter three of Charles…

The BBCSO explore the relationship with God and Man in works by Haydn, Moussa and Strauss

On the face of it music criticism has often seemed to me a very unimaginative profession. Take this BBCSO concert, for example, the programming of which has largely appeared to…

Of human suffering: the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s powerful Shostakovich Babi Yar

You’d have to be a strange kind of human being not to smell death in Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony. Icy, spooky and deeply unsettling orchestral sounds at the outset give way…

BCMG at Wigmore Hall

London visits from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are rarer than we might hope, though doubtless many would object, quite reasonably, that visits to the capital need not be its…

The Busoni Centenary: Kirill Gerstein and the BBC Chorus in Busoni’s genre-defying Piano Concerto at the Barbican

The centenary of Ferruccio Busoni’s death fell earlier this year, not that ninety-nine per cent of the musical world appears to have noticed. Where are the operas, even his masterpiece…

Young Fauré and his masters

Tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are to make Wigmore Hall history in a five-year series of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. Dubois will be the first artist…

Mahler in extremis: Ferocity and peace from Tilson Thomas and the LSO in the ‘Resurrection’

Sometimes when you listen to performances of the great symphonies – and Mahler’s Second is one of the greatest – your mind turns to other things. This can often be…

Intensity of expression from Malin Byström at the Wigmore Hall

A recital programme as inviting as this from the acclaimed Swedish soprano would surely have attracted a full house for her Wigmore recital. A pity then to see so many…