Concert Reviews

Trio Kuvars Viyolet at Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, Istanbul
Based in Istanbul, the Trio Kuvars Viyolet brings together three gifted musicians of the younger school: Evrim Güvemli, clarinettist with the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, Rahşan Apay, and Jerfi Aji,...
Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Peter Oundjian at Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami – Wondrous Light & Scheherazade – Jan Lisiecki plays Beethoven
Continuing the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Florida tour, this concert opened with ‘Wondrous Light’ by John Estacio (born 1966), the second movement of his four-part work, Borealis (1997), in which he...
Michael Roll at Wigmore Hall – Beethoven Bagatelles, Brahms Piano Pieces & Schubert’s D960 Sonata
Michael Roll, now in his 70th-birthday year, won the first Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. That was in 1963 when Roll was 17. It seems a long while since he last...
Christopher Maltman & Graham Johnson at Wigmore Hall – Schubert Recital [The Complete Songs]
Across any complete cycle of Schubert’s Lieder there are bound to be a few evenings of off-cuts and juvenilia. The trick is to disguise them via thematic links, as Graham...
Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Peter Oundjian at Kravis Center, West Palm Beach – Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony & Eugene Onegin Polonaise – Jan Lisiecki plays Chopin
This concert, part of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s five-city Florida tour, began with a trumpet fanfare, launching the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. The TSO was a bit off-balance in...
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/Nicholas Collon at Barbican Hall – Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet & Prokofiev 5 – Tai Murray plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Concerts by The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain are always worth attending, for they are invariably performed by a full-sized ensemble (such as may have been more often heard...
The Royal Opera – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin – Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Nicole Car, Michael Fabiano; directed by Kasper Holten; conducted by Semyon Bychkov
Kasper Holten’s staging of Eugene Onegin was first seen three years ago, since when it has travelled to Italy and Australia. This first revival has brought some changes, especially in...
Modigliani Quartet & Beatrice Rana at Wigmore Hall – Robert Schumann programme
Robert Schumann’s chamber music is every bit as wonderful as his Symphonies and piano music. All the present pieces were written in 1842, as were the other two String Quartets...
New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert – Sibelius’s Symphony 4, Swan of Tuonela & Finlandia – Joshua Bell plays Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto
This is the time for a curious combination of celebration and soul-searching, to look back upon the waning year and ahead toward the new one, resolving to make it better...
Christian Blackshaw at Wigmore Hall – Schubert’s Moments musicaux & D850 Piano Sonata and Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien
Christian Blackshaw played this Schubert/Schumann programme to a packed Wigmore Hall, with concentration accentuated by dimming of the lights. Having completed his traversal of the solo piano works of Mozart,...
New York String Orchestra/Jaime Laredo – Barber’s Adagio & Schubert’s Death and the Maiden – Jinjoo Cho plays Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto
The New York String Orchestra is a misnomer left over from the original intentions of founder Alexander Schneider to offer a practicum for string-playing students who came to New York...
Handel’s Messiah at St John’s Smith Square – Stephen Layton conducts Polyphony, OAE, Katherine Watson, Iestyn Davies, Gwilym Bowen & Neal Davies
This Messiah was the final event of the thirtieth Christmas Festival taking place at St John’s, Smith Square. Its artistic director Stephen Layton presided over a fine team of soloists,...
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at the Barbican – Academy of Ancient Music/Richard Egarr with Lorna Anderson, Barbara Kozelj, James Gilchrist & Ashley Riches
With performances of Handel’s Messiah legion at this time of year, it is good to hear the sequence of six Cantatas which comprise J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and tell...
Philharmonic-Chamber Orchestra of London/Christopher Petrie at Cadogan Hall – Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No.2 & Calin Huma’s Symphony Carpatica – Leslie Howard plays Rachmaninov
Although one couldn’t quite agree with a colleague who remarked “I’ve never seen Cadogan Hall as full as this”, this was undoubtedly a sell-out event. As it happened, a pre-concert...
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner – The Ride to Castle Yonder & A Child of Our Time – Louis Schwizgebel plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4
Louis Schwizgebel took Second Prize in the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition and he is now a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. He has impressed each time I have...
LSO/Daniel Harding – four-movement Bruckner 9 – Maria João Pires plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3
Daniel Harding, Maria João Pires and the LSO were back with Beethoven and more Bruckner, in a concert that presented a completion of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. With Pires in the...
Waltraud Meier & Joseph Breinl at Wigmore Hall – Mahler (Kindertotenlieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Rückert-Lieder) and Wagner (Wesendonck-Lieder)
My first visit to Bayreuth, in 1993, coincided with Waltraud Meier’s Isolde, an electrifying and defining performance. On July 12 this year, in Munich, the great German mezzo, now nearly...
Handel’s Messiah at Barbican Hall – Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton & Robert Davies; Britten Sinfonia/Eamonn Dougan
It was a Barbican-bright Messiah: elegant and smooth-edged on modern instruments, it nestled happily within the dry warmth of the Hall’s polished-wood finish. Only the audience creaked, with an unsettling...
Arcadi Volodos plays Brahms and Schubert at Barbican Hall
Arcadi Volodos is feted as one of the great poet-pianists of his generation (he’s 43). The antithesis of flashy pyromaniac, he almost makes a fetish of his undemonstrative style, yet,...
Spitalfields Winter Festival – Marian Consort & Rory McCleery at St Leonard’s Church
The Virgin Mary and the newly born Christ-child act, naturally, as the focus for much Christmas reflection; sometimes St Joseph and the three Magi receive some attention too. The humble,...
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