Concert Reviews

BBCSO – Invitation Concert – 3rd October
For its first Maida Vale Invitation Concert of the new season, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under the expert and sympathetic guidance of Pascal Rophé, performed works by four composers in...
Deirdre Gribbin – Visions of Utopia
’Visions of Utopia’ was the theme of this concert that also included Berg’s Violin Concerto (Augustin Dumay) and Mendelssohn’s ’Hymn of Praise’ (Symphony No.2), which was broadcast live on BBC...
LPO Concert – 28th September
Orchestrating a duo sonata does not necessarily make it a concerto. That’s certainly the case here. Horovitz’s orchestration obliged a transcription of the cello part for double bass. Benjamin Wallfisch...
Mahler’s Conversion – 26th September
You might think that composers’ lives would be ideal subject matter for dramatists, but the list of failures far outweigh the successes. Film disasters have emanated from Ken Russell (including...
Viktoriya Grigoreva in Concert
This was a recital played with commitment, intelligence and deep affection for the music, without a trace of ego or excess. Viktoriya Grigoreva is an established Ukrainian artist now re-establishing...
Philharmonia Orchestra – New Season
The opening of orchestral seasons around the world has been affected by the 11 September atrocities, albeit in a minor way compared to the suffering of so many in Washington...
Alexander Sitkovetsky – 24th September
I am sure Alexander Sitkovetsky’s beautiful tone will be his fame and fortune. His sound is rich but clear, glossy but still full; its creaminess perfectly filled the ideal acoustic...
Ned Rorem at Bridewell
"That the music of Ned Rorem, America’s finest living songwriter, is hardly performed in this country is as baffling as the absence of domestic air-conditioning and insect screens" – so...
LPO – New Season – 16th September
Having booked out of the Royal Albert Hall from a Proms season turned on its head by the events of 11 September, a little respite might have been welcome before...
Wigmore Hall – 6 September 2001
1840 is known as Schumann’s ’year of song’, some 138 Lieder emerging as the realisation dawned that marriage to Clara Wieck was finally to be forthcoming. Of the song-cycles composed...
Edinburgh International Festival – 16th August 2001(2)
This programme had the pre-concert stimulus of a potentially exciting combination of orchestra and conductor, and the rare opportunity to juxtapose two symphonies that usually fill a concert’s second half.It...
Edinburgh International Festival – 16th August 2001
Andras Schiff and the Philharmonia gave a whole evening of Bach concertos in London last year; it proved too much of a good thing. Oh, for a pair of oboes...
Harrison Birtwistle – The Last Supper (Glyndebourne) (2)
Ever since its foundation back in the 1930s, Glyndebourne has been a forward-thinking opera house, eager and willing to present new works, especially by native composers, alongside popular fare. Benjamin...
Harrison Birtwistle – The Last Supper (Glyndebourne)
“Thirteen blokes sitting round a table is rather intriguing, don’t you think!” Sir Harrison Birtwistle responding to a question about the Last Supper’s suitability for staging. Well, Birtwistle is a...
The Otto Klemperer Series – Concert 12th July
Think of any great pianist and it’s usually easy to think what characterises any one’s interpretative-characteristics and soundworld. Pollini might be considered aristocratic and aloof, Perahia poetic, Uchida emotional (hypersensitive...
The Long Rain (UK Premiere) – 12th July
Those who heard the world premiere of Clinamen/Nodus in theLondon Symphony Orchestra’s ’Boulez 2000’ series will know that Olga Neuwirth is a composer worth listening out for. In what seems...
Schubertreise – Concert III – 8th July
For the third concert of his enterprising Schubertreise, James Lisney adopted a lateral approach to repertoire that was convincing in practice. How positive the contrast between Mozart’s G major Sonata...
The Otto Klemperer Series Concert – 8th July
For the second year running, Andras Schiff is remembering Otto Klemperer, the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Principal Conductor between 1959 and 1972. Last year’s Barbican mix of composers is replicated this week,...
Almeida Festival – John Casken: God’s Liar – 6th July
Thirteen years ago, the then Almeida Festival premiered John Casken’s first opera, Golem, which, at subsequent revivals and on disc, has proved among the more distinctive British stage-works of recent...
Alfred Brendel 70th Birthday concert – 30th June
Alfred Brendel, doyen of pianists, and serious scholar and humorous poet too, is seventy. This was a fitting birthday concert, which not only had an upbeat programme of cheerful pieces,...
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