Concert Reviews

12478 1
Kotaro Fukuma at Wigmore Hall
A programme of French and Russian music brought this most admirable 31-year-old Japanese-born pianist Kotaro Fukuma back to London, his Wigmore Hall appearance attracting a number of eminent pianists amongst...
12469 1
Guildhall Symphony Orchestra/Yan Pascal Tortelier at Barbican Hall – Lutosławski & Berlioz
Two masterpieces, both given mightily impressive presentations by the well-schooled (pun intended) Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, galvanised into action by the score-less and baton-less Yan Pascal Tortelier: not so much a...
12468 1
Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen – Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande – with Stéphane Degout, Sandrine Piau & Laurent Naouri [City of Light: Paris 1900-1950]
Over the past three years, in London, there have been distinguished concert performances of this most elusive of operas, including the memorable 2012 Prom conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. To...
12466 1
New York Philharmonic/Jaap van Zweden – Wagenaar’s Cyrano de Bergerac & Beethoven 7 – Hilary Hahn plays Korngold
Although his music is now rarely heard, Dutchman Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941) was an esteemed composer in his day. His Cyrano de Bergerac Overture of 1905 is a harmonically conservative but...
12465 1
The Royal Ballet – Don Quixote [Carlos Acosta’s production]
Carlos Acosta’s production of the old warhorse Don Quixote rides into town again for its first revival. It will share the Christmas schedule at the Royal Opera House with Christopher...
12463 1
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Richard Tognetti – Mozart, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Grieg, Elgar, Dvořák … and a Mahler encore
Richard Tognetti’s Australian Chamber Orchestra uses modern instruments, while the OAE uses ‘period’ ones with gut strings. So for this concert there was a certain meeting of minds between the...
12462 1
Kensington Symphony Orchestra/Russell Keable – Walton’s Hindemith Variations & Sibelius 5 and the premiere of Stephen Montague’s From the Ether – John Tomlinson sings Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel: In Memoriam Leslie Head
Given in memory of its founder and conductor Leslie Head (1922-2013), this ambitious concert by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra found the ensemble continuing to thrive under Head’s successor, Russell Keable....
12461 1
Cheek to Cheek: The Songs of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers – Karen Oberlin & Steve Ross at The Crazy Coqs
Karen Oberlin was last seen at The Crazy Coqs a year ago when she presented her sparkling tribute to Harold Arlen and ‘Yip’ Harburg, while Steve Ross is well known...
12460 1
World premiere of Howard Blake’s The Snowman Fantasia – Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields/Neville Marriner
Composers who wish to be taken seriously, whose music is almost exclusively tonal and who write concertos which are called concertos, rather than pieces tagged with titles taken from last...
12464 1
Bennewitz Quartet at Wigmore Hall – Schulhoff & Schubert
Five Pieces for String Quartet by Prague-born Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) are collectively an intriguing proposition, part Les Six and part Second Viennese School. They chart a largely attractive suite of...
12458 1
Royal College of Music – Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
Singing is in fine voice at the Royal College of Music, to judge from its Magic Flute. Jean-Claude Auvray’s staging and Ruari Murchison’s designs, though, are less successful. Murchison’s set...
12467 1
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Young People’s Concert: Peter and the Wolf! – Damon Gupton narrates
This “Super Saturday” (morning) concert went very well, a fine introduction for young folk to the joys of music and the untouchable experience of the concert-hall ... being there. Leonard...
12446 1
Welsh National Opera at Birmingham Hippodrome – Rossini’s Guillaume Tell – David Kempster, Barry Banks & Camilla Roberts; directed by David Pountney; conducted by Carlo Rizzi
With more or less the same production team as Mosè in Egitto the previous evening, Welsh National Opera completed its week in Birmingham with William Tell. Rossini’s final stage-work is...
12456 1
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Yale-Princeton Football Game, Solstice, Endgames, An American in Paris – Concerto for String Quartet by Benjamin Lees [live webcast]
“Most of us don't want to be outsiders.” Maybe Charles Ives wasn’t worried about being so when it came to his music (experimental, visionary, and rarely performed during his lifetime)....
12448 1
Welsh National Opera at Birmingham Hippodrome – Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto – Miklós Sebestyén, David Alegret & Christine Rice; directed by David Pountney; conducted by Carlo Rizzi
Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto gets relatively few staged outings, although the title role has attracted basses of renown, particularly Ruggero Raimondi, who for many years kept the part in his...
12447 1
English National Opera – John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary, directed by Peter Sellars, with Patricia Bardon, Meredith Arwady & Russell Thomas, conducted by Joana Carneiro
Giving the world stage premiere of John Adams and Peter Sellars’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary is a feather in the cap of English National Opera, a company...
12453 1
Rebeca Omordia at St Olave’s – Debussy, John Ireland, Prokofiev, Fred Onovwerosuoke
Lunchtime concerts in London churches take place virtually every day, with programmes that are, of necessity, short but which occasionally feature music not otherwise encountered. It is easy to overlook...
12452 1
Rameau’s Platée – Early Opera Company/Paul Agnew with Thomas Walker & Emmanuelle de Negri
Following the double-bill from Les Arts Florissants two days earlier, the Rameau celebrations continued with the Early Opera Company’s presentation of Platée (1745). If not quite so musically ravishing as...
12472 1
San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall – Mahler 7
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony has long been his most misunderstood work. Both scholars and critics, refusing to accept the unifying musical elements in the work as sufficient to warrant considering the...
12455 1
CBSO/Nicholas Collon – Peter Grimes, Appalachian Spring, Shostakovich 9 – François Leleux plays Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto
While he has enjoyed success as co-founder and principal conductor of the Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon is still in the process of establishing himself on the wider scene. This concert...