Elgar’s The Kingdom arrives in the heat of inspiration on a surge of orchestral magnificence. A glorious theme representing “New Faith” is announced in the strings, as noble and aspirational as anything Elgar wrote. If his own…
The Los Angeles Philharmonic seemed to bring all the shiny surfaces of their spanking Disney concert hall with them to London. Their tour opener – John Adams’ Slonimsky’s Earbox – was a Californian dazzler. Talk about arriving…
The Austro-Hungarian connection loomed large but it was the Hungarian bloodline which bound this typically shrewd Vladimir Jurowski programme – and out of the Trannsylvanian twilight came Peter Eötvös like a latterday Bartok. Shadows owes much to…
Fashion is a strange thing. There was a time when the César Franck Symphony was popular core repertoire. All the greats performed and recorded it – Monteux, Bernstein, Karajan. Suddenly it was out of vogue – obsolete,…
Ten years is a lifetime in singing and since his London recital debut, courtesy of Ian Rosenblatt, Juan Diego Florez has achieved superstar status in that highly specialised corner of the bel canto repertoire demanding suppleness and…
Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic “Winter Daydreams” thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak mid-winter…
The Hungarian Presidency of the EU and the start of the Liszt Bicentennial – two very good reasons for some of Hungary’s (indeed the world’s) finest – the Budapest Festival Orchestra – to party. And bringing Esterhazy…
There are a handful of examples that I can think of where an unknown conductor has stepped in at the eleventh-hour and created an overnight sensation. This was not one of them. And yet, credit where it…
It was as audacious as it was challenging: a programme to wreak havoc on sensitive dispositions – and because this was the National Youth Orchestra there was something incredibly liberating about the welter of sound that unleashed…
Programming Liszt is like counting calories: you can blow your entire month’s intake in less than an hour. Whoever thought of pairing the Symphonic Poem Mazeppa with the 2nd Piano Concerto – presumably the conductor Francois-Xavier Roth…