Concert Reviews

Philharmonia Orchestra/John Wilson in the Royal Festival Hall – Vaughan Williams’s Wasps Overture & Sea Symphony – Mark van de Wiel plays Gerald Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto
Classical Source recently posted my very favourable review of the Hallé/Mark Elder recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony. It is the finest performance I have heard, live or...
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski – Mozart Notturno (K286) & Serenade (K388), Magnus Lindberg’s Gran Duo, and Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Soile Isokoski
Mozart’s D-major Notturno is written for four small orchestras. For this London Philharmonic concert Vladimir Jurowski had two of the groups located at the extremes of the Choir area, with...
Philharmonia Orchestra at The Anvil Basingstoke – John Wilson conducts Vaughan Williams’s Wasps Overture & Sea Symphony and Mark van de Wiel plays Gerald Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto
This programme of exhilarating music was, on paper, ideal for a Saturday night out. Had there not been a choral presence of over 150 voices the Anvil’s unsold seats would...
Palm Beach Opera – Bizet’s Carmen – Rinat Shaham, Leonardo Capalbo, Zachary Nelson & Eleni Calenos; directed by John de los Santos; conducted by David Stern
The success of any production of Bizet’s Carmen depends in large measure on the performer of the title role. In addition to excelling vocally, she must exude sex appeal (to...
Mark Padmore & Paul Lewis at Wigmore Hall – Goethe and Heine Lieder by Schumann, Brahms, Schubert & Wolf
Any Lieder programme from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis is eagerly anticipated. They have put together a recital focussed on the work of two of Germany's greatest nineteenth-century poets, Heine...
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Davis – Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, with Michèle Losier, Samuel Boden & David Soar
Berlioz’s Dramatic Symphony based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – if adapted and departed from – may be an uneven affair, but it also contains some of the composer’s greatest...
Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst at Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami – Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet & Winter Daydreams – Leif Ove Andsnes plays Schumann
This concert was part of the tenth-anniversary season of “Cleveland Orchestra Miami”.Few stories are as widely known as Romeo and Juliet. Franz Welser-Möst and the Clevelanders faithfully conveyed Tchaikovsky’s vivid...
Emmanuel Tjeknavorian & Maximilian Kromer – Sonatas for Violin and Piano
As the career of Jascha Heifetz blossomed after his legendary debut in the United States with a recital at Carnegie Hall, he remarked that the number of well-wishers who spoke...
LSO/François-Xavier Roth – Parsifal Prelude & Mahler 5 – Camilla Tilling in Berg’s Seven Early Songs
Not only did the Prelude to Parsifal eloquently anticipate the doubt and pain that drives the rest of the opera, it also cast its spiritual crisis over later, predominantly German...
The Royal Ballet – Frederick Ashton’s Rhapsody & The Two Pigeons
Oh the joys of Frederick Ashton! There are few choreographers who are so consistently satisfying; after the advent joys of Monotones I and II, The Royal Ballet revive Rhapsody, the...
Benjamin Grosvenor at Gusman Concert Hall, Coral Gables – Mendelssohn, Chopin, Ravel & Liszt
This matinee recital by 23-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor was presented as part of the 60th-anniversary Season of the Friends of Chamber Music of Miami. Grosvenor has had fairly limited exposure to...
LSO/Pablo Heras-Casado – Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest & Dvořák 7 – Alisa Weilerstein plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto
This concert marked the debut of Alisa Weilerstein with the LSO and the return of Pablo Heras-Casado.Shakespeare’s 400th-anniversary falls this year and Tchaikovsky’s substantial invocation of The Tempest made a...
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel at Royal Festival Hall (3) – Daniel Barenboim plays Brahms’s Piano Concertos
Christopher Dyment’s engrossing new book, Conducting the Brahms Symphonies – from Brahms to Boult, begins: “Brahms played his Pianoforte Concerto in D minor superbly. I especially noted his emphasizing each...
New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert – Church Windows & The Rite of Spring – Frank Peter Zimmermann gives the US premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Violin Concerto No.2
The centerpiece of this concert (its third of three presentations) was the Second Violin Concerto by Magnus Lindberg, who served as the New York Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence from 2009 to 2012....
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel at Royal Festival Hall (2) – Messiaen’s Turangalîla with Yuja Wang & Cynthia Millar
Olivier Messiaen imbued his early masterpiece Turangalîla (started 70 years ago this year) with “all my strengths of love, of hope and of musical research” (from a letter to the...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Serenades by Dvořák & Elgar and Mozart’s Prague Symphony – Maya Beiser plays Mohammed Fairouz’s Desert Sorrows Cello Concerto [live webcast]
The third outing for this programme if the first for it in Orchestra Hall. It found the Detroit Symphony serenading us with diverse scoring from Dvořák and Elgar. The former...
BBC Symphony Orchestra – Sakari Oramo conducts A Shropshire Lad & Elgar’s Second Symphony – Jennifer Koh gives UK premiere of Anna Clyne’s The Seamstress
Sakari Oramo’s first season as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra included a fair run of new and recent Violin Concertos; something continued in this concert with The Seamstress...
Warren Mailley-Smith at St John’s Smith Square – The Complete Chopin Cycle – 4 (The 24 Preludes)
This was the fourth of Warren Mailley-Smith’s eleven recitals covering all of Chopin’s solo piano works. The pianist’s considerable fan-base was out in force, raising the temperature in the under-heated...
Semyon Bychkov conducts Don Juan and Francesca da Rimini at Royal Academy of Music
Having just conducted a run of Eugene Onegin at Royal Opera and led a BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, Semyon Bychkov returned to the Royal Academy of Music. To open this...
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra/Sascha Goetzel – Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in Lutfı Kırdar Anadolu Auditorıum
No visit to Istanbul is complete without a dose of Turkey's highest profile orchestra, the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic. Founded in its present form in 1999, funded by the industrial group...
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