It was clear that there was an Italian on the podium. While muted strings invoked an atmosphere so crepuscular that that one involuntarily closed one’s eyes the murmur of voices intoning the words “Requiem aeternam” seemed to…
When Schoenberg made his steroidal orchestration of Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet he saw and heard what many don’t – that Brahms was more of a radical than the music world was ready to acknowledge, that he…
There has never been any doubt in my mind that Lionel Bart was the quirkiest, the most extraordinary, and potentially greatest musical theatre talent that this country has ever produced. Quite apart from the scarcity of those…
We began with the most beautiful moments in all of Ravel and ended with the ugliest. For the final concert, the climax, of the Philharmonia’s revelatory Lutoslawski retrospective Woven Words the fastidious Frenchman proved the perfect framing…
With the news that Vasily Petrenko had extended his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra “to eternity” (his words) the little bit of Russia that came to the soon to be refurbished Philharmonic…
George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written On Skin arrives at the Royal House for its UK premiere trailing extraordinary plaudits from all who’ve seen it. One can understand why. Music theatre is such a delicate, precarious, business…
The magic usually descends quickly in a Mitsuko Uchida recital but the opening Bach of this rescheduled Festival Hall concert – a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Klavier – took a…
Death comes in many guises but in this ingeniously devised Philharmonia concert he most definitely did not have the last laugh. That was for Shostakovich and a curiously ticking time bomb of percussion which first surfaced in…
Even singular sensations grow older – yet A Chorus Line, which coined the phrase, seems ageless, so sure is it of its place in musical theatre history, so locked now into our theatrical consciousness. It is, no…
Hell hath no fury… and in Medea’s case comes so precipitously that even her children must be taken from the room whenever her demons threaten an unscheduled appearance. That is but one of many telling details that…