Leif Ove Andsnes – the Beethoven Journey
Tonight Leif Ove Andsnes plays the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Royal Festival Hall. As I write he’s probably just about now presenting the Chamber Music award at this…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall *** (Review)
Opera with and without words, with and without voices – the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s new season began with a typically provocative piece of Vladimir Jurowski programming: an intriguing juxtaposition of the ripest Strauss and Zemlinsky affording dissatisfaction…
A Conversation With JOHN WILSON: ‘Rodgers and Hammerstein at the Movies’
After the John Wilson Orchestra’s stunning 2010 Prom celebration of Rodgers and Hammerstein I commented: “It was as close as we could imagine to being guests on the 20th Century Fox soundstage circa.1955…the sound, the style, the…
A new age for journalism
Off to meet with some NYU (New York University) students tomorrow. The topic? The online future of journalism. I have a thing or two to say about that having recently extricated myself from The Independent in favour…
A Conversation With KERRY ELLIS
At the busy junction between studio sessions for her new album (Brian May in attendance, naturally), an arena tour of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, and her first “intimate” cabaret date at the Hippodrome’s new Matcham…
Martinu “Julietta”, English National Opera – Review ****
Julietta. The name is spelt out across the front cloth in the shifting body shapes of a sleeping figure – Michel Lepic, a bookseller (Peter Hoare). He stirs where the final “A” should be and with a…
Adam Guettel and friends
Extraordinary to see the grandson of Richard Rodgers stroll over to a microphone in the Hippodrome’s Matcham Room and start in with the “country scat” of his first masterpiece Floyd Collins. More extraordinary still to hear it…
Routledge and I Guildford bound
Traveling with my star, Patricia Routledge, to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford tomorrow, Tuesday. I gather they are rehearsing a Gilbert & Sullivan onstage until 3. Routledge was an unforgettable Ruth in the marvelous Joseph Papp…
The Bjork of the lieder world
I first came across Helena Juntunen in an Osmo Vanska concert at the South Bank. She sang Sibelius – and she sang it with such engagement and power, such rapture, that I came out at the interval…
The Last Night of the Proms – Review ****
Brittania always rules on the Last Night of the Proms – but in this Olympic year she really ruled. I’m still puzzled as to why they couldn’t find a home-grown Olympic Fanfare and not one recycled from…