Concert Reviews

16733 1
The Matthew Bourne machine rolls on with a new production filling the Sadler’s Wells Theatre every night for most of August. This time, Sir Matthew has turned his attention to...
16720 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... Fanny Mendelssohn (sister of Felix, and sadly as short-lived as he) wrote her sole String Quartet as a married woman (a Hensel). The...
16718 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... On paper this was an interesting pre-lunch recital, tracing links and lines of approval between Schumann, Brahms and Dohnányi over a period of...
16711 1
This final and festive MM 2019 program – cleverly framing two playfully-spirited twentieth-century works with a pair of equally light-hearted compositions from the eighteenth-century – brimmed with good humor and...
16709 1
Fulham Opera, formed in 2011, is a relative newcomer to the London amateur-professional fringe. Under its artistic director Ben Woodward, the company already has a Ring, the Dutchman, Puccini and...
16703 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... Nine of Grieg’s numerous Lyric Pieces graced the first half of Llŷr Williams’s Edinburgh Festival recital, perfect morning listening, especially when played with...
16707 1
Robert Carsen's production of Handel's first London opera, Rinaldo (1711) – revived here for the second time by Glyndebourne – has already acquired a certain renown, even notoriety, for its...
16706 1
Elfyn Jones is a Welsh composer and soundscape artist and he has used a story from the Mabinogion, the compendium of ancient Welsh myth and magic, for Her Face was...
16704 1
In summer, with the country-house operas either over or coming to an end, the Grimeborn and Tȇte à Tȇte festivals, in London, rush in to fill the vacuum with short...
16700 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... You know you are in the company of great artistry when within a second you are drawn completely into music that you don’t...
16699 1
This MMFO program, a gem of imagination and sequence, presented a Central European kaleidoscope, offering a glittering combination of urban refinement and rural tradition representing three nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian...
16692 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... An attractive 11 a.m.-starting programme on paper, and even more so in the listening, complemented by Radio 3 presenter Donald Macleod being so...
16698 1
Excellent performances by the Takács Quartet of Mozart and Beethoven; and, with Jeremy Denk, a delightful romp through Ernö Dohnányi’s Opus 1.Mozart was struggling financially when he secured a commission...
16688 1
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... This mid-morning recital was to have seen Beatrice Rana play Chopin, Ravel and Stravinsky. Faced with her unfortunate indisposition at less than twenty-four...
16689 1
A glowing account of Haydn’s exuberant and alluring Symphony 88 opened. With Iván Fischer in complete control the playing was precise, nuanced and perfectly balanced, the music emerging with clarity...
16684 1
Pierre-Laurent Aimard opened with an exceptionally well-crafted and -performed recital of about twenty numbers from Schubert’s more than three-hundred dances. Listening to him strum these delightful Waltzes, Ländlers and Ecossaises...
16677 1
This production of Das Rheingold is Grimeborn’s first venture into Wagner, and it is the biggest thing this ever-adventurous festival has crammed into the larger of the Arcola’s studios. The...
16678 1
Since his 2002 appointment as Music Director of the Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Louis Langrée has worked closely with Artistic Director Jane Moss. They have brought fresh thinking and...
16670 1
Grimeborn Opera launches its summer season with Alison Thorman’s Violetta, her reduction of Verdi’s La traviata, which also marked Opera Allegra’s debut at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. It runs for...
16667 1
Of nearly thirty surviving operas by Cavalli, La Calisto (1651) remains, so far, about the only one to have secured a regular place in the repertoire, notwithstanding sporadic outings for...