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Maurizio Pollini was back in London – following a year of ill-health and cancellations. His programme was all familiar repertoire, and there was a large audience to welcome the eighty-one-year-old artist, one of the very great pianists who still plays a huge role in forming the taste of three generations of music-lovers – particularly where …

Maurizio Pollini at Royal Festival Hall Read More »

Gilbert & Sullivan fans generally regard Princess Ida (1884) as one of the duo’s finest achievements, a sequence within its inspired score in particular earning it the plaudit ‘a string of pearls’ from one commentator. In this musically fine, but truncated, performance it’s essentially the pearls we get without the string, as the dialogue is reduced to …

Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida – Sophie Bevan, Benjamin Hulett, Simon Butteriss & Catherine Wyn-Rogers; OAE conducted by John Wilson Read More »

This London premiere run of Conor Mitchell’s Abomination – ‘fusing opera with drag, cabaret and political satire’ in the Southbank Centre’s accurate description – coincides mordantly with Charles III’s Coronation festivities. This ‘verbatim opera’ is a collage of judgemental statements about homosexuality made by politicians (usually within a half-baked discourse of fundamentalist, evangelical Protestantism) of Northern Ireland’s …

Conor Mitchell’s Abomination: a DUP opera – with Rebecca Caine & Tony Flynn; directed by Conor Mitchell; conducted by Tom Deering Read More »

This LPO concert was titled ‘Music from the Shadows’, and Klaus M­äkelä steered the orchestra through big works written between 1910 and 2016, all of them tonal, melodic and traditionally symphonic. And there were plenty of shadows, ranging from colourless grey to deepest black, from haunting anxiety to rock-hard darkness. The programme note described Shostakovich’s …

LPO, Klaus M­äkelä and Julian Rachlin – Shostakovich, Larcher and Mahler Read More »

Oxford-born Alexander Soddy’s career has been predominantly in German opera houses – until last year he was music director of the Mannheim Nationaltheater (since 2016) – and he has a particular affinity with German repertoire, as he has proved recently at the Royal Opera House in Wagner and Strauss. This was his Philharmonia debut, replacing …

Philharmonia Orchestra/Alexander Soddy, Bryn Terfel; Wagner & Bruckner Read More »

Alexandre Kantorow comes with a formidable pedigree – winner of the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition as well as its rarely awarded Grand Prix – that declares itself unequivocally in playing of rare quality. All those aspects of virtuoso performance, from technique to rapport, not only dazzle the listener but also complement each other, and the result …

Alexandre Kantorow plays Brahms, Liszt & Schubert @ QEH Read More »

This evening of lush French classics was a perfect confection. Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte was crisply initiated, the dovetailing of the horn and the two bassoons both mellow and beautifully balanced. This was continued when the theme was handed over to the various woodwind pairings with telling effect. Chausson’s song-cycle Poème de l’amour …

LPO/Bertrand de Billy & Jennifer Johnston Read More »

The Italian and 2012 Leeds competition winner Federico Colli was back at Queen Elizabeth Hall for a rather left-field recital of five works, only two of which were originally intended for piano. Colli has form when it comes to idiosyncratic programming; here it verged on the maverick – and was a great success. Mozart’s K396 …

Federico Colli plays Mozart, Schubert and Prokofiev at QEH Read More »