Concert Reviews

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The Royal Ballet – La Bayadère
Natalia Makarova’s production of the old warhorse La Bayadère has been wheeled out yet again at Covent Garden to fill that fallow period after the glut of Nutcrackers. It is...
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The Metropolitan Opera – Orfeo ed Euridice
Reviews of the first performance of this season’s run of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" rhapsodised about mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe's first-ever performance in the touchstone trouser role of Orfeo. Writing in...
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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Mackerras Sarah Chang
Musically, 2008 was bound to be a hard act to follow, with some of the world’s greatest names either gracing the stage of Philharmonic Hall or being commissioned to write...
RPO/Gatti – Mahler 9
In one of his last performances as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniele Gatti gave us a spellbinding performance of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Gatti, conducting from memory,...
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Allan Clayton & James Baillieu at Wigmore Hall
When choosing lines by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hugo Wolf was careful to avoid anything already set by his contemporary Robert Schumann. It was therefore interesting to juxtapose four of his...
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“Endless Pleasure” – A Tour of Handel’s London Operas
This was my first invitation to a party celebrating “Handel Year 2009” (he died 250 years ago). The festivities at Wigmore Hall began in a vocally spectacular way. How appropriate...
LSO/Colin Davis – Verdi Requiem
With the players of the London Symphony Orchestra on dazzlingly extrovert form, Sir Colin Davis unleashed an urgently dramatic and full-blooded reading of Verdi’s “Requiem” (given in memory of Richard...
Haydn’s The Creation – Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/René Jacobs
The Barbican Hall was packed for the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and René Jacobs – both very much hot properties following a recent stream of acclaimed recordings. Jacobs has a gift...
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Amandine Savary at Wigmore Hall
Make no mistake, this was wholly remarkable. In a week of adventurous recitals at Wigmore Hall by young pianists (the others being Natalia Strelchenko and Evelina Puzaite), this was undoubtedly...
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Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series 2009 – 5
The final day of this year's Park Lane Group New Year Series opened with an early-evening recital from Benjamin Powell. His impressive pianism was heard at its best in the...
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Siegfried Idyll & Das Lied von der Erde at Wigmore Hall
On paper this looked a terrific programme, an ideal coupling, and it drew a sell-out audience, but in practice it proved less than that. Although Mark Elder was advertised as...
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National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/Semyon Bychkov
A year on, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain returned to the Roundhouse (the 1970s were a cutting-edge time here with Boulez and the BBC). There was a peremptory...
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BBCSO/Bělohlávek [From the New World]
Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBC Symphony continued their current season with this nominally all-Czech programme including a couple of rarities, notably the Fantasy (1902) which is the nearest that Josef...
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Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series 2009 – 4
Day four of Park Lane Group’s New Year Series exemplified all that is best about this week of music-making, revealing both established and fledgling scores in performances of commitment and...
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Hanno Müller-Brachmann & András Schiff at Wigmore Hall
Hanno Müller-Brachmann may not, as yet, be a ‘big name’, but given that András Schiff was partnering him here says something. His debut at Wigmore Hall last January was cancelled,...
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Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series 2009 – 3
This third leg in the Park Lane Group's January week devoted to young artists and 20th/21st-century music got off to a fine start with an early evening recital from James...
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London Schools Symphony Orchestra/Segerstam Elina Vähälä
Music has always had its outsize characters. When I see Leif Segerstam I am reminded of the ageing Leopold Stokowski slowly appearing on the platform, frail and seemingly unable to...
Vaughan Williams and Friends [Warlock’s The Curlew]
Ralph Vaughan Williams's songs are a significant though (a couple of evergreens apart) relatively neglected part of his output – such that the present series, devised by Julius Drake, has...
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Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series 2009 – 2
Speaking to two members of the Artistic Committee of the Park Lane Group during an interval, I rather flippantly described the part of the programme we had just heard as...
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Elizabeth Watts & Philip Thomas at Wigmore Hall
It seems strange to speak of Mozart and Mendelssohn as neglected composers, yet in the medium of song they remain relatively unrepresented.This "With and Without Words" series redresses the balance...