MONDAY 12TH APRIL 2010 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT “PRIMA DONNA” Sadler’s Wells Rufus Wainwright is the past master of “operatic pop”. He writes wonderful and original songs – witty, ironic, insidiously memorable. He might one day write a similarly…

SATURDAY 10TH APRIL 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/ NEZET-SEGUIN Royal Festival Hall Fireworks from Handel and Stravinsky but most of all from Yannick Nezet-Seguin in a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that redefined its rhythmic exuberance in ways…

THURSDAY 11TH MARCH 2010 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ ADAMS Barbican Hall The intimations of both Ravel and Stravinsky in Colin Matthews’ opulent orchestrations of Debussy’s gusty Preludes “The Wind in the Plain” and “What the West Wind Saw”…

TUESDAY 2ND MARCH 2010 VIENNA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/ MAAZEL ** Barbican Hall It’s interesting, not to say alarming, how variable the great Vienna Philharmonic can be. Give them a Brahms Hungarian Dance – as Lorin Maazel did here…

TUESDAY 30TH MARCH 2010 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA/ MUTI Royal Festival Hall You always know when Riccardi Muti is in town: the Philharmonia Orchestra is celebrating another birthday. It’s now of pensionable age – 65 – and in fine…

SATURDAY 20TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ JUROWSKI **** Royal Festival Hall Fateful prophecies and exultant perorations – the enduring spirits of Leos Janacek and Josef Suk ascend from the valley of the shadow of death and another…

SATURDAY 20TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ JUROWSKI **** Royal Festival Hall Fateful prophecies and exultant perorations – the enduring spirits of Leos Janacek and Josef Suk ascend from the valley of the shadow of death and another…

SATURDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ NEZET-SEGUIN **** Royal Festival Hall There’s a particular way of not just playing but feeling and touching French music. Watching Yannick Nezet-Seguin, without a baton, shape and sculpt Ravel’s Le Tombeau…

FRIDAY 12TH FEBRUARY 2010 DONIZETTI “THE ELIXIR OF LOVE” *** English National Opera You may wonder what the most archetypally homespun of Italian operas is doing in Kansas? But then again what sense does Italy make when…