Reviews of live performances

A scene from The Nutcracker by The Royal Ballet @ The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. (Opening 08-12-15) ©Tristram Kenton 12/15 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com
The Royal Ballet – Peter Wright’s production of The Nutcracker conducted by Koen Kessels – Marianela Nuñez & Vadim Muntagirov
Three cheers for Sir Peter! Peter Wright, a mainstay of British ballet for many decades, turns ninety-five on 25th November, and The Royal Ballet, having recently revived his Giselle, now also...
Liv Redpath, with The MET Orchestra Chamber Ensemble conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin Photograph: Chris Lee
The MET Orchestra Chamber Ensemble & Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Schulhoff, Matthew Aucoin, Gabaye, Price & Mozart
For many years The MET Orchestra has regularly made two or three annual appearances at Carnegie Hall. This season concertgoers have even more opportunities to hear it outside The MET's...
Royal College of Music Opera – The Magic Flute
How wonderful to be back in the Britten Theatre and to see and hear some of the young talent being nurtured over these last few tricky years on the stage...
Matthew Rose (Wotan) and Rachel Nicholls (BrŸnnhilde), Nicky Spence (Siegmund), Emma Bell (Sieglinde), Brindley Sherratt (Hunding), Susan Bickley (Fricka) in The Valkyrie by Richard Wagner @ London Coliseum. An English National Opera production. Directed by Richard Jones. Conducted by Martyn Brabbins. (Opening 19-11-2021) ©Tristram Kenton 11-21 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com
English National Opera – The Valkyrie – Matthew Rose, Rachel Nicholls, Nicky Spence, Emma Bell & Brindley Sherratt – directed by Richard Jones; conducted by Martyn Brabbins
A bold and confident statement of intent for any opera company is to put on a staging of the epic that is Richard Wagner’s opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen....
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Rose Studio – Purcell, Britten & Bridge
This neatly-conceived program, the second in the 2021-22 Rose Studio Season of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, traversed more than two centuries of British music in under an...
Karen Gomyo. Photograph: Gabrielle Revere
New York Philharmonic – Dima Slobodeniouk conducts Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony; Karen Gomyo plays Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto
Dima Slobodeniouk made a propitious New York Philharmonic debut in this concert, leading a program originally scheduled to be conducted by Semyon Bychkov, who withdrew for reasons unknown. The evening...
Macbeth (Simon Keenlyside), ROH Chorus, ROH Macbeth (c) ROH 2021 Photograph: Clive Barda
The Royal Opera – Verdi’s Macbeth – Simon Keenlyside, Günther Groissböck & Anna Pirozzi; conducted by Daniele Rustioni
“Contains adult themes” informs the ‘guidance’ to this production that is given on the online cast-sheet for this revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s evocative and stylised production from 2002 of Verdi’s...
Welsh National Opera – Rossini’s The Barber of Seville – Nicholas Lester, Nico Darmanin, Heather Lowe & Andrew Hore; directed by Giles Harvergal; conducted by Tomáš Hanus
Whether or not the timing of Welsh National Opera’s programming of The Barber of Seville is intentional this season, the story of Rosina’s escape from enforced confinement in the home...
Quinteto Astor Piazzolla. Photograph: Cristian Welcomme
Quinteto Astor Piazzolla at Florida’s Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
Quinteto Astor Piazzolla is celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the eponymous Argentine composer-bandoneónist with a world tour, performing a representative selection of his prolific output that revolutionized...
Philharmonia Orchestra – Human/Nature: Music for a Precious Planet – Xian Zhang conducts Beethoven’s Violin Concerto & Mahler’s The Song of the Earth – with Alina Ibragimova, Sarah Connolly & Andreas Schager
I find it hard to believe, but it looks as though this Philharmonia concert gave us the first time Alina Ibragimova has performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto in the UK; the...
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Rose Studio – Valerie Coleman, Darius Milhaud, Henri Tomasi, Pavel Haas & Elliott Carter Photograph: Fred Stucker
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Rose Studio – Valerie Coleman, Darius Milhaud, Henri Tomasi, Pavel Haas & Elliott Carter
The Rose Studio Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) seem to come from another planet than those presented in its sister venue, Alice Tully Hall. For...
Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall – Beethoven’s Seventh & Eighth Symphonies and Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers
This concert continued the Philadelphia Orchestra's Carnegie Hall celebration of Beethoven 250 with two of the composer's later Symphonies framing Carlos Simon's Fate Now Conquers, a 2019 work which they...
Welsh National Opera's production of Madama Butterfly. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith
Welsh National Opera – Puccini’s Madam Butterfly – Joyce El-Khoury, Leonardo Caimi, Kezia Bienek, Mark Stone; directed by Lindy Hume; conducted by Carlo Rizzi
After a forty or so year run with its previous production of Madama Butterfly, Welsh National Opera presents a new interpretation of Puccini's perennial tragedy that wrenches it into the twenty-first century. The...
Philharmonia/Elim Chan – Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails & Brahms’s Second Symphony – Hilary Hahn plays Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending & Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto
This sell-out concert attracted a younger audience than one associates with the Philharmonia, thanks in part to the renown of a soloist who has managed to combine social-media presence with...
Theatre of Sound – Judith’s Castle and Bluebeard’s Castle at Stone Nest in London’s West End
A new company in a new (or reclaimed venue) is something to shout about, and Stephen Higgins's and Daisy Evans’s Theatre of Sound is making something of a splash with...
In Bluebeard’s Castle – Edward Gardner conducts the London Philharmonic in Haydn and Bartók, with Ildikó Komlósi & John Relyea
The only obvious connection between the two works in this LPO programme is that they were both composed in Hungary. Edward Gardner, in his first season as the London Philharmonic’s...
Curated by Carlos – Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells – City of a Thousand Trades; Imminent; Chacona
It is hard to think of a more dispiriting evening at the ballet.  Carlos Acosta’s first calling card in London since assuming the directorship of Birmingham Royal Ballet has his...
The Ring Without Words – Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the Philharmonia – Miah Persson sings Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs
This concert celebrated life’s passing at its most sumptuous, opening with Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs – the Philharmonia gave the premiere posthumously, conducted by Furtwängler with Kirsten Flagstad at...
Leonidas Kavakos & Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall – Bach, Busoni, Shostakovich
After eighteen months of canceled performances, Leonidas Kavakos has finally launched his three-part Perspectives series, postponed from the 2019-20 season. For this first concert, the violinist partnered with his longtime...
Aurora Orchestra and Nicola Benedetti play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto conducted by Nicholas Collon, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
A concert with a couple of familiar favourites, a popular soloist, and an orchestra and conductor who like to challenge and educate: the Queen Elizabeth Hall was at capacity. Mendelssohn...
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