Concert Reviews

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...
The Film & TV Music of Debbie Wiseman – Tom’s Midnight Garden, Wolf Hall, Lesbian Vampire Killers, Father Brown, Arsène Lupin – Guildhall Chamber Orchestra at Milton Court
Debbie Wiseman is a prolific composer for film and television and Classic FM’s Composer in Residence. She is an alumna of the Guildhall School where her composition teacher was Buxton...
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel at Royal Festival Hall (1) – Stravinsky’s Petrushka & The Rite of Spring
This was the first of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra’s three-concert residency at the Royal Festival Hall. If one is going to programme an all-Stravinsky concert, a questionable idea, at least...
English National Ballet at London’s Coliseum – Le Corsaire
English National Ballet revives its cracking production of Le Corsaire, bringing much needed post-Christmas pep to the London dance scene. It is irresistible fun, a swashbuckling tale from Byron, pulled,...
LSO/Simon Rattle – Ravel, Delage & Dutilleux – with Leonidas Kavakos & Julia Bullock
Perhaps the only concern in Simon Rattle’s increasingly intensive schedule with the LSO is that their ‘honeymoon’ will be over well before he becomes Music Director in September next year....
Lukas Geniušas at St John’s Smith Square – Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók & Prokofiev
The 25-year-old Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas has, among many other awards, won second prize in both the 2010 Chopin Competition and last year’s Tchaikovsky Competition, which means that he moves...
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov – Detlev Glanert & Brahms – Paul Watkins plays Haydn
The first BBC Symphony Orchestra Barbican Hall concert of 2016 was bookended by Brahms, opening with his music re-imagined by Detlev Glanert (born 1960). Brahms-Fantasie (2012) has the subtitle of...
London Schools Symphony Orchestra/Arvo Volmer – Beethoven & Sibelius – Roberto Gonzalez & Louise Hopkins play Brahms’s Double Concerto
A week ago, we welcomed the 156-strong National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain to the Barbican Hall, in a demanding programme of Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Prokofiev. This programme, given by...
Symphonia Boca Raton with David Kim at Roberts Theatre – Bach Brandenburg Concertos, Pachelbel’s Canon, Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Symphonia Boca Raton, now in its eleventh season, was formed in the wake of the demised Florida Philharmonic and here welcomed David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.This concert began...
LSO/Simon Rattle – Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Peter Sellars – with Magdalena Kožená, Christian Gerhaher & Gerald Finley
Before ushering us into the crepuscular kingdom of Allemonde, the LSO’s Music Director designate gave a short tribute to the late Pierre Boulez and dedicated this performance of Debussy’s Pelléas...
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