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…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
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…
Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall
Founded in October 1964 by Amelia Freedman at the Royal Academy of Music, a shortish walk away from the Wigmore Hall, the Nash Ensemble is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season,…
Barbara Hannigan at the Barbican
Barbara Hannigan is unquestionably a star in today’s musical firmament. Anyone who has heard (and seen) her Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre, live or recorded, would neither doubt nor forget…
The Guildhall Symphony Orchestra: a thrilling program of Hillborg, Britten and Strauss.
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra concerts are always something of an event and this one was no exception. Taking in a Swedish modern classic, one of Benjamin Britten’s finest works and a…
Renée Fleming sings Strauss
“Renée Fleming sings Strauss” shouted all the publicity for this concert, omitting to mention the program was 75% Wagner. Conductor Thomas Guggeis hardly got a look in, yet his successes…
Peer Gynt takes the stage at the Opéra national du Rhin, Strasbourg
This concert realisation of Peer Gynt offered a powerful riposte to Debussy’s famously waspish comment on Grieg’s music: that it had the strange charm of a pink bonbon stuffed with…