Tchaikovsky “Eugene Onegin”, Royal Opera House (Review)
We begin where we will end – with Onegin and Tatyana closing the door on the life that was and the life that might have been. It’s one of the great “what ifs” of opera and Kasper…
Verdi “La Traviata”, English National Opera, London Coliseum (Review)
So this is La Traviata laid bare, stripped of all superfluities (some chorus, all ballet, offstage reveries in the final scene), and played out “in secret”, as it were, behind closed curtains. Actually the director Peter Konwitschny…
Philharmonia Orchestra, Zimerman, Salonen, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Of all the heavyweight anniversaries being celebrated this year the name of Witold Lutoslawski will have been less at the forefront of peoples’ minds had the Philharmonia Orchestra and their Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor not chosen…
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Period instruments demand absolute honesty from their players. Their sound is their personality – candid, quirky, eccentrically beautiful – but their soul is revealed in the spirit of the playing where beauty is not skin deep and…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Elder, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
The natural logic of this heady mix of first and second Viennese utterances was turned on its head with Webern’s early tone poem Im Sommerwind opening like a breathy premonition of the autumnal second song of Mahler’s…
Birtwistle/Harsent “The Minotaur”, Royal Opera House (Review)
Ancient myths reside in Harrison Birtwistle’s orchestral writing – and in The Minotaur, which I now believe to be the richest of all his stage works, it comes up through your body like the shifting of tectonic…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mattila, Hampson, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
A single bottom C sunk deeper than even the deepest underground trains running so audibly below the Royal Festival Hall was the auspicious start to the South Bank Centre’s much anticipated festival “The Rest is Noise”. Forget…
London Symphony Orchestra, Upshaw, Adams, Barbican Hall (Review)
You learn a lot about a composer from the pieces they revere – and for John Adams what might have seemed like an unlikely opening gambit to kick-start this short stack of three concerts with the London…
Wagner “Der fliegende Holländer”, Zurich Opera, Royal Festival Hall
Why anyone these days would want to perform Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer with an interval when even the three act version was so plainly fashioned to be performed without one is beyond me. There is that tell-tale…
Renée Fleming, Barbican Hall (Review)
Building a memorable solo recital is an art in itself – that we know – but personalising it so precisely to your vocal character that it’s hard to imagine other voices even contemplating such a programme, now…