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…
Prom 75: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Haitink, Royal Albert Hall – Review ****
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra can play Haydn’s last symphony – No 104 “London” – in its sleep but that is not, I hasten to add, the impression one wants to take away from any performance of it…
A Conversation With SARAH CONNOLLY
Thursday 8th November 2012 5.45pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall Pre-performance conversation with Sarah Connolly, as part of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Queens, Heroines, and Ladykillers: French Exchange series… [Read More]
The Artistry of Maria Friedman and Jason Carr finally ignites the Hippodrome’s new Matcham Room – review
It’s taken a while for the Hippodrome’s spanking new cabaret room to feel lived-in and alive and it’s taken a real artist – actually two real artists – to capitalise on its intimacy and generate a buzz.…
Prom 69: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Chailly – Review ****
A grim logic pervaded the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second Prom. Messiaen’s Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum effectively begins where Mahler’s 6th Symphony ends – from the lowest of the lowest depths. Two bass tubas sound the death knell…
Prom 63: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle – Review *****
It was, without doubt, the most breathtaking musical segue of this or any other Prom season and it unlocked a programme with Simon Rattle’s musical intellect written all over it. First came the cosmic vibrations of Ligeti’s…
Prom 55: Britten “Peter Grimes”, English National Opera, Edward Gardner – Review ****
You can take the opera out of the opera house but you can’t take the opera house out of the opera – not when the spirit of David Alden’s benchmark 2009 production of Britten’s Peter Grimes resides…
Prom 54: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Petrenko – Review ****
I’m not quite sure what Her Majesty would make of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ 9th Symphony or more particularly of the fractured fanfare flourishes which greet her so rowdily and enthusiastically through its opening pages – but…
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel”, Opera North, Barbican Theatre – Review ****
The songs may be known the world over – the “Football Song” is now international folklore – but a fully staged Carousel is still something of a rarity and the sharp intake of breath which greeted the…
Prom 51, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Nelsons – Review ****
Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony “Leningrad” is a tough act to follow but a tougher act to precede and I’m not sure it was ever going to be fair on Emily Howard whose Prom premiere “Calculus of the Nervous…