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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Vaughan Williams’ three greatest symphonies in chronological sequence and at the heart of this extraordinary Prom – even better in realisation than on paper – the ineffable Romanza of the Fifth: haunted by one war, fearful of…
George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s Soho Cinders could hardly be lodged closer to Old Compton Street than if it were actually “on location”. Dean Street’s Soho Theatre is fast emerging as the neighborhood watering hole for new…
For those of us who have always regarded The Apostles as the least of Elgar’s great trilogy of religious oratorios the magnificence of Mark Elder’s Hallé performance will have coaxed if not demanded re-evaluation. The Albert Hall…
Pace the naysayers (and there are still many of them): Bernstein’s Mass IS a masterpiece. But it’s also a theatre piece and what unfolded here at this inexplicably belated Prom premiere (inexplicable because if ever there was…