Concert Reviews

Stefan Bednarczyk Sings Noël Coward at The Crazy Coqs
Noël Coward’s wit and sophistication finds its perfect venue in the handsome Crazy Coqs cabaret room. For this fastidiously constructed evening of delight, Stefan Bednarczyk brings to life a sterling...
City of London Festival – Beethoven’s Choral Symphony – LSO/Myung-Whun Chung
There is a strong South Korean presence at this year’s City of London Festival, and not just in terms of Samsung’s sponsorship of this concert. The four soloists are all...
Trio di Clarone & Kalle Randalu at Wigmore Hall – Mendelssohn, Bruch & Schumann
The Trio di Clarone is a family affair, a clarinet trio comprising Sabine Meyer, her brother Wolfgang and husband Reiner Wehle, who have enjoyed more than 30 years as a...
Amir Katz plays Schumann at Wigmore Hall
All-Schumann piano recitals are not so frequent that they can be considered anything other than out of the ordinary, and it is a brave pianist who plans such an evening,...
Verdi’s Requiem at Cadogan Hall – St Albans Bach Choir & Kensington Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Peter Ash
The St Albans Bach Choir and the Kensington Philharmonic Orchestra were joining forces for the first time. A perfect choice was made with Verdi’s Requiem, as spectacular as it is...
Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride – Bolshoi Opera at Lincoln Center conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride is one of two operas (the other is Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Passenger) being presented in this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival, which brings performances by artists...
Forrest, Wright & Yeston’s Grand Hotel [Guildhall School of Music]
Vicki Baum (1888-1960) was originally a harpist in Vienna. After three years playing in an orchestra she changed careers and became a journalist. She was a nurse during World War...
City of London Festival – Nash Ensemble – Milhaud, Ravel and Franck
Flanked by marble busts of George III and George IV by Sir Francis Chandrey, the members of Nash Ensemble took their seats in Goldsmiths’ Hall, positioned in front of the...
The Royal Opera – Puccini’s La bohème [Ermonela Jaho & Charles Castronovo; directed by John Copley; conducted by Cornelius Meister]
A double celebration marked this return of Puccini’s La bohème – in John Copley’s staging – as it marks the 40th-anniversary of this production (only the second-ever by The Royal...
Les Saisons Russes du XX1 siècle at London’s Coliseum – Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel [Diaghilev Festival; Moscow State Music Theatre named after Natalia Sats/Alevtina Ioffe]
Of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifteen operas, The Golden Cockerel (ou Le Coq d’Or) was his farewell to the form, completed in 1907, the year before he died, and given its posthumous...
Mark Padmore & Julius Drake at Wigmore Hall – Schubert’s settings of Seidl
For their BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall, Mark Padmore and Julius Drake chose settings by Schubert of the poet Johann Gabriel Seidl. The performers positioned the songs...
Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures [Union Theatre, London]
I cannot imagine anyone except Stephen Sondheim writing a show about the westernisation of Japan, as seen through Japanese eyes in 1853. In 1976 was New York ready for a...
City of London Festival – Penderecki & Bruckner – LSO/Daniel Harding
In some ways, the good and bad aspects of this concert were attributable not so much to anything Daniel Harding achieved with the London Symphony Orchestra, but simply to the...
Pinchas Zukerman Summer Music Festival at Cadogan Hall – 3: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Mozart’s final three Symphonies, 39-41
There was perhaps a routine look about this programme. To have the last three Mozart symphonies one after another seemed a pretty unimaginative piece of planning. In the event it...
Daryl Sherman at The Crazy Coqs
A warm welcome to Daryl Sherman, one of the era’s finest jazz performers, who has appeared at several London venues, including Pizza on the Park and Ronnie Scott’s, and is...
Nederlands Dans Theater 1 at Sadler’s Wells – Sehnsucht/Schemetterling
The number two loomed large at Nederlands Dans Theater 1 at Sadler's Wells: two pieces by the choreographic duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot (the William-and-Mary of contemporary dance), two...
Opera Holland Park 2014 – Britten’s The Turn of the Screw [Robin Tritschler, Ellie Laugharne, Brenden Gunnell, Diana Montague; directed by Annilese Miskimmon; conducted by Steuart Bedford]
That Opera Holland Park has never previously staged The Turn of the Screw, or indeed any other Britten opera, comes as something of a surprise given the intimacy of the...
Shadwell Opera presents Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony [Arts Theatre, London]
Philip Glass’s stage work has been doing well in the UK in recent years – Music Theatre Wales’s production of In the Penal Colony and ENO’s Satyagraha in 2010, The...
Pinchas Zukerman Summer Music Festival at Cadogan Hall – 2: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Beethoven Prometheus, Brahms’s Double Concerto with Amanda Forsyth, Enigma Variations
Those fortunate enough to have attended the opening concert in the Pinchas Zukerman Summer Music Festival on June 26 will have hastened to acquire a ticket for the second, a...
LSO/Jonathan Nott – Beethoven’s Second Symphony and Messiaen’s Turangalîla with Steven Osborne & Cynthia Millar
Although well-established in Germany and Japan, Englishman Jonathan Nott is still only an occasional visitor to London – so making this debut with the London Symphony Orchestra the more auspicious....
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