Concert Reviews

To Paris via Piccadilly – Claire Martin & Joe Stilgoe at The Crazy Coqs
For their second week-long residency at The Crazy Coqs, Claire Martin and Joe Stilgoe have assembled a programme celebrating Paris in Spring, interspersing classics from Charles Trenet and Jacques Brel...
The Royal Ballet – The Winter’s Tale [Christopher Wheeldon/Joby Talbot; world premiere]
The Royal Ballet has another hit on its hands in the form of Christopher Wheelson’s new The Winter’s Tale. After the successes of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with the same...
Philharmonia Orchestra/Jakub Hrůša – Bohemian Legends II – Dvořák, Janáček and Suk – with Lukáš Vondráček
The second instalment of Bohemian Legends brought a real sense of occasion and proved that, given enthusiastic advocacy, imaginative programming can create audiences. When was the last time we heard...
LSO/Valery Gergiev – Scriabin Symphonic Works (3: The Divine Poem) – Daniil Trifonov plays Chopin – Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées
In between the second LSO Scriabin concert, three nights previously, and this one, Valery Gergiev had nipped over to New York and on Friday evening conducted Richard Strauss with the...
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra/Fabio Luisi at Carnegie Hall – Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier & Ein Heldenleben with Karita Mattila in Four Last Songs
Stepping in for an indisposed Lorin Maazel (Valery Gergiev had done so the night before), Fabio Luisi had only one rehearsal on the morning of this Munich Philharmonic concert to...
Andrew Lloyd Webber & Ben Elton’s The Beautiful Game [Union Theatre]
Apart from Damn Yankees, you would be hard pressed to think of a stage musical with a sporting background, save Cricket, which Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote for...
BBC Symphony Orchestra – Andrew Davis conducts Elgar’s The Apostles with Paul Groves, Sarah Connolly, Gerald Finley, Jacques Imbrailo, Nicole Cabell & Brindley Sherratt
Having performed The Dream of Gerontius a few days previously, Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra followed on with The Apostles (1900-03) the first in a projected trilogy of...
London Philharmonic/Andrey Boreyko – World Premiere of Górecki’s Symphony No.4 – Julian Rachlin plays Stravinsky – Tansman’s Stèle in memoriam Igor Stravinsky
Part of the attraction of this London Philharmonic concert was the building of a coherent programme around the world premiere of Henryk Górecki’s Fourth Symphony – its Tansman connection reflected...
New York Philharmonic/Christoph von Dohnányi – Schumann 2 – Paul Lewis plays Brahms
In October 2000, the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi, then its music director, opened the Carnegie Hall season with a gala concert that paired Brahms's Second Piano Concerto (with...
Philharmonia Orchestra/Jakub Hrůša – Bohemian Legends I – Dvořák, Janáček and Suk – with Arabella Steinbacher
Bohemian Legends is the title of a trio of Philharmonia Orchestra concerts focussing on three Czech composers whose personal as well as professional connections gave rise to a musical life...
LSO/Valery Gergiev – Scriabin Symphonic Works (2: Symphony 2 & Prometheus) – Messiaen’s L’Ascension
Not so long ago a concert of music by Scriabin and Messiaen would have ensured a poor audience response, but it was gratifying to see a near-full-house for this, the...
London Handel Festival – Deborah
Although Deborah (1733) is one of Handel’s first fully-fledged English oratorios, it is also one of the most boisterous, dramatising the Israelites’ conquest over their Canaanite enemies following their entry...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Dvořák programme with Yo-Yo Ma [live webcast]
A one-off programme, given outside of the normal Detroit Symphony concert-days, and delivered to London at midnight-30 on Thursday morning. A single (and singular) composer too, Antonín Dvořák, whose prolific...
Diva Power! Ann Hampton Callaway Salutes the Great Ladies of Song [The Crazy Coqs]
Ann Hampton Callaway is noted for her ceaseless promotion of the golden age of popular song, having grown up in a home where music was foremost – her father was...
London Philharmonic/Jukka-Pekka Saraste – Bruckner 8 – Renaud Capuçon plays Schumann
It is good news that a conductor from the mid-generation, here Jukka-Pekka Saraste (he’s 57), remains faithful to Robert Haas’s edition of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, and it was also good...
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Robert Spano – Debussy and Rachmaninov – Jonathan Biss gives world premiere of Bernard Rands’s Piano Concerto
For his third Boston Symphony Orchestra commission, Bernard Rands has composed a Piano Concerto that honors his 80th-birthday year. Written for Jonathan Biss, this was the fourth of its world...
OAE/Semyon Bychkov – Symphonies – Beethoven 7 & Schubert’s Great C major
They met for the first time a few days ago, a concert at The Anvil in Basingstoke, this same programme. The Royal Festival Hall re-match confirmed that Semyon Bychkov and...
Emerson String Quartet at Wigmore Hall – Shostakovich 14 & Britten 3
This poignant programme, realised for the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall, brought together two works by close friends in the autumn of their lives. Shostakovich wrote his...
BBC Symphony Orchestra – Andrew Davis conducts Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Stuart Skelton, Sarah Connolly & David Soar
From the bleakly scored opening unison theme on clarinets, bassoons and violas, it was clear that this was going to be an exceptional Dream of Gerontius. It folded you into...
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin – Bright Sheng’s Zodiac Tales & Shostakovich 10 – Leon Fleisher plays Ravel’s Left-Hand Concerto [live webcast]
Another corking programme from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra – its free-to-view, easily accessed live webcasts have become a must. This matinee was a good mix of the new and the...
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