Concert Reviews

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Alexander Vedernikov at The Anvil Basingstoke – Night on a Bare Mountain & Symphonie fantastique – Yevgeny Sudbin plays Scriabin’s Piano Concerto
Alexander Vedernikov (formerly of the Bolshoi Theatre and currently Chief Conductor of the Odense Symphony Orchestra) took the helm of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for a programme of 19th-century repertoire....
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Fabien Gabel – Le tombeau de Couperin, Háry János, War and Peace – and the world premiere of Richard Dubugnon’s Klaveriana with Noriko Ogawa
An almighty traffic jam on the A13 meant that I missed the first half of this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, although I caught what must have been most of the...
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrés Orozco-Estrada – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, The Firebird – Kristóf Baráti plays Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto
A pleasantly-balanced concert, this, which – whilst not greatly stretching the intellectual capabilities of any conductor – contained sufficient breadth to trip up the unwary interpreter. Two 24-carat masterpieces bookended...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Brahms Festival (5) – Piano Concerto 1 with Hélène Grimaud and Schoenberg’s orchestration of the G-minor Piano Quartet [live webcast]
Friday morning, Detroit. And so to the fifth instalment (which had been played the evening before) of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms Festival, now welcoming Hélène Grimaud for the First...
Love – Edmund Goulding’s 1927 film starring Greta Garbo & John Gilbert with a new score by Aphrodite Raickopoulou played by Vadim Repin and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Frank Strobel
Love was Greta Garbo’s first attempt at Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (she made a second version in sound in 1935) and is notable for eviscerating the novel and supplying it with...
LSO/Gianandrea Noseda – Shakespeare – Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth – Simon Trpčeski plays Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto
Shakespeare-inspired music dominated this LSO concert, Gianandrea Noseda (just given a leg up in the Orchestra’s hierarchy) conjuring performances of high drama. Smetana’s 1858 take on Richard III, his rise...
The Royal Opera – Richard Jones’s production of Puccini’s Il trittico [Il tabarro; Suor Angelica; Gianni Schicchi]; conducted by Nicola Luisotti
Returning for six nights, of which this was the first, Richard Jones’s production of Puccini’s Il trittico was an unalloyed joy: a darkness-weepy-hilarious journey realised with assurance. The operas –...
Philadelphia Orchestra/Stéphane Denève at Kravis Center, West Palm Beach – Shakespeare – Beatrice and Benedict, A Midsummer Night’s Dream & Romeo and Juliet
The Philadelphia Orchestra and Stéphane Denève paid tribute to Shakespeare in advance of the 400th-anniversary of his death this April. As the three works on this matinee demonstrate that the...
Prokofiev’s Five Piano Concertos at Brooklyn Academy of Music – George Li, Alexander Toradze, Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Redkin & Sergei Babayan with Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev
Recordings and concerts of a composer’s complete genre have been in abundance for years, but rarely are any such collections presented in a single evening. At Howard Gilman Opera House,...
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko – Tchaikovsky programme – Manfred Symphony and Augustin Hadelich plays the Violin Concerto
I soon forgot my surprise at not being offered an overture as the artists launched into a memorable account of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Augustin Hadelich took a poetic view of...
Steven Isserlis plays Bach Cello Suites and Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages at Wigmore Hall (2)
Steven Isserlis continued where he left off. A week ago at Wigmore Hall he played as an encore the ‘Prelude’ from the C-major Cello Suite. Now he played the whole...
Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Guildhall School of Music & Drama
If only Benjamin Britten had used a different librettist to Ronald Duncan for The Rape of Lucretia, this early and uncompromising depiction of betrayed innocence – the theme that would...
Doric String Quartet at Wigmore Hall – Haydn’s Opus 76 [Fifths, Emperor, Sunrise]
To programme six of Haydn’s very greatest String Quartets over two days was an adventurous and exciting project which was rewarded by almost a full Wigmore Hall each night. In...
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Markus Stenz – Detlev Glanert’s Frenesia & Beethoven’s Fifth – Hong Xu plays Schumann’s Piano Concerto
The at-first-sight curious programme order for the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert in its 2015-16 Barbican Centre season was easily explained by logistics. To put the UK premiere of Detlev...
Philharmonia Orchestra/Daniele Gatti – Oberon Overture & Schumann 2 – Roberto Cominati plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3
Once a frequent part of London’s musical life, nowadays Daniele Gatti is an all-too-infrequent visitor. His return was all the more welcome although it reminded one that London’s loss is...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Brahms Festival (4) – Serenade 1 & Symphony 2 [live webcast]
If, prior to this Detroit Brahms Festival I had been told I could only tune-in to one of the six broadcasts, then it would have been this D-major matinee of...
Palm Beach Opera – Donizetti’s Don Pasquale – Carlo Lepore, Janai Brugger, Lucas Meachem, David Portillo & Robert Watson; directed by Fenlon Lamb; conducted by Antonino Fogliani
Palm Beach Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale embraces an excellent quartet of principals and fine orchestral playing. An attractive and well-timed staging combine to demonstrate why it is one...
Warren Mailley-Smith at St John’s Smith Square – The Complete Chopin Cycle – 5 (Piano Sonata No.2)
With this programme Warren Mailley-Smith’s complete traversal of the solo piano works of Chopin in eleven recitals at St John’s Smith Square reached the fifth in the series. It concluded...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Brahms Festival (3) – Academic Festival Overture, Serenade 2 & Symphony 1 [live webcast]
“One laughs while the other cries”, said Johannes Brahms. He was referring to his two Overtures, Tragic and Academic Festival. Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra had already visited...
Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer at Carnegie Hall – Der Freischütz & Prokofiev 5 – Marc-André Hamelin plays Liszt
Here in the center of the American opera world, two great works have been shamefully neglected. I did attend a concert version of Rossini’s William Tell about ten years ago...
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