Concert Reviews

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Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra – Marin Alsop conducts Anna Clyne’s Masquerade & Mahler 5 — Ray Chen plays Bruch
The annual Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert. Marin Alsop conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, comprised of TMC Fellows who have been selected to participate in an intensive program of advanced...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2026 – La scala di seta – with Hasmik Torosyan, Alasdair Kent & Paolo Bordogna; directed by Damiano Michieletto; conducted by Iván López-Reynoso
Presented alongside another early farsa in this year’s Rossini Opera Festival, this La scala di seta (1812) contrasts sharply with the traditional setting and direction of the exactly contemporary L’occasione fa il ladro. This is...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2026 – L’occasione fa il ladro – with Manuel Amati, Damiana Mizzi & Dave Monaco; directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; conducted by Alessandro Bonato
The opportunity spoken of in the title of Rossini’s early one Act comedy for Venice (1812) comes about when two suitcases are accidentally swapped. Despite Don Parmenione’s taking a sneaky...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2026 – Le Siége de Corinthe – with Adrian Sâmpetrean, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya & Matteo Roma; directed by Davide Livermore; conducted by Carlo Rizzi
Le Siége de Corinthe (1826) was Rossini’s first opera written in French for Paris and therefore holds an important place in his output and in the development of opera generally,...
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Tanglewood on Parade 2026 – Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (Samy Rachis, Anna Handler & Ken-David Masur)
 “Tanglewood on Parade”, a full day and evening of music and fun, is an annual tradition at Tanglewood. This year, it was part of a week of concerts and other...
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Esa-Pekka Salonen Conducts and Instructs at Tanglewood
In this concert, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, comprised of Instrumental Fellows, performed works by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Béla Bartók. Conducting Fellows Lauren Smith and Julian Gilewski led...
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Tanglewood Music Festival 2026 – Andris Nelsons conducts Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro
Music Director Andris Nelsons led a scaled-down Boston Symphony Orchestra in a delightful performance, featuring an outstanding cast, most of whom were making their BSO and Tanglewood debuts.James Darrah Black’s simple...
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Longborough Festival 2026 – Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel
Productions of Humperdinck’s fairy tale opera usually draw an extensive, opulent contrast between the impoverished austerity of the home in which Hansel and Gretel live with their parents, and the Witch’s gingerbread house offering the illusion of an endless...
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Chopin / Drigo / Richter / Prokofiev / Tchaikovsky / Liszt arr. Simpson
An atmosphere of celebration pervaded the Royal Opera House for the opening night of ‘Marianela – Timeless', an evening curated by The Royal Ballet’s reigning ballerina, Marianela Nuñez, who, at...
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Opera Holland Park 2026 – Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera – with Elin Pritchard, Matteo Desole, Dario Solari & Rosalind Plowright; directed by Rodula Gaitanou; conducted by Michael Papadopoulos
In bringing the action of Verdi’s Un ballo in Maschera (1859) forwards to the Hollywood’s Golden Era on either side of the Second World War, Rodula Gaitanou’s production (revived from...
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Pat Metheny returns to the Barbican – Side-Eye III+ – Barbican Centre, London
Pat Metheny's return to the Barbican Centre, the first of three performances, spoke about an artist whose work has shaped modern jazz and jazz guitar artistry for half a century....
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West Green Opera – Mozart’s The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute means many things to many people, ranging between its two narrative poles of a serious story or Bildungsroman about enlightenment from the forces of darkness and evil (represented...
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Longborough Festival 2026 – Verdi’s Macbeth – with Mark Stone, Viktoriia Balan & Jung Soo Yun; directed by Karolina Sofulak; conducted by Nil Venditti
Verdi’s Macbeth masterfully compresses Shakespeare’s play into a compelling four Act opera that fulfils all the expectations of a mid-19th century musical melodrama while also adding the theme of a...
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Das Rheingold at Grange Park Opera
With Barrie Kosky’s ongoing Covent Garden production dominating metropolitan perceptions of Wagner’s tetralogy and Longborough Festival Opera having set a high bar for country house Wagner, it was brave of...
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Handel’s Serse – with Paula Murrihy, Louise Alder & Rebecca Leggett – Academy of Ancient Music/Cummings
With its title character, the unhinged tyrannical leader of Persia waging war against the West, Handel’s Serse (1738) could serve as a satire, in reverse, on contemporary events in Iran....
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20th Century Masterpieces – BRB
Three cheers for Sir Peter Wright and three cheers more for Birmingham Royal Ballet who drew balletic attention away from the capital for once to focus it firmly on England’s...
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So Are We – Lightfoot and Leon – RB
The Royal Ballet’s standing as a serious classical dance company takes another hard knock with its latest programme, a double bill by the resolutely contemporary choreographic duo of Sol León...
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Vasily Petrenko and the RPO in Hisaishi & Scriabin
A curious programme with which to bring down the curtain on a successful season. Vasily Petrenko began with one of his well-intended homilies, promising us an evening of extremes but...
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John Wilson at The Grange Festival 2026: Celebrating Sinatra
Audience members had come from far and wide, making a kind of pilgrimage to this unlikely, austerely magical venue set in the Hampshire countryside. In recent years John Wilson and...
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Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse in Paris – Alexandre Kantorow plays Beethoven, and Tarmo Peltokoski conducts Mahler
Asked to name any conductor outside the UK and the chances are you’ll head straight to Finland for an answer. Twenty-six-year-old Tarmo Peltokoski has been at the helm of the...