FRIDAY 23RD JULY 2010 PROM 9: BBC PHILHARMONIC/ SINAISKY Royal Albert Hall It’s the highlight of every “Last Night”, the nation’s unofficial National Anthem, but for its composer Hubert Parry Jerusalem has proved as much of a…
WEDNESDAY 21ST JULY 2010 PROM 6: BBC SO/ LEWIS/ BELOHLAVEK Royal Albert Hall The big occasion often brings out the best in the truly gifted and with so much riding on his much-anticipated Proms cycle of the…
MONDAY 19TH JULY 2010 PROM 4: RLPO/PETRENKO Royal Albert Hall The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra pulled off the not inconsiderable feat of acknowledging both the Schumann and Mahler anniversaries simultaneously with their Prom opener. Mahler’s highly suspect…
TUESDAY 13TH JULY 2010 RASCH “THE DUCHESS OF MALFI” English National Opera & Punchdrunk We journeyed to deepest docklands, a bewildered group of punters and members of the press clutching our precious tickets (all performances sold out…
SATURDAY 10TH JULY 2010 BERNSTEIN “MASS” Royal Festival Hall Mass is Leonard Bernstein’s most personal, most provocative piece. His daughter Jamie has described it as his “most Lennyish” piece – meaning that it knows no inhibition, that…
SUNDAY 4TH JULY 2010 MOZART “DON GIOVANNI” Glyndebourne Festival Opera The crushing first chord of the Overture plunges us into darkness – a sudden and scarifying blackout. Through the gloom of residual light we can just make…
MONDAY 28TH JUNE 2010 MOZART “DON GIOVANNI” Opera Holland Park There’s narcissism and there’s narcissism and in his terrific new staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni for Opera Holland Park director Stephen Barlow leaves us in no doubt…
TUESDAY 22ND JUNE 2010 MASSENET “MANON” Royal Opera House No doubt about national identity when the opening ten minutes or so of the drama is given over to an impatient lust for food and wine. Throw in…
FRIDAY 11TH JUNE 2010 DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY Wigmore Hall Dmitri Hvorostovsky dedicated his first Wigmore recital in many years to the great Russian mezzo Irina Arkhipova – a voice which by all accounts set this hall vibrating for…
THURSDAY 10TH JUNE 2010 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ ELDER Barbican Hall At the spiritual centre of this exciting re-match between Mark Elder and the London Symphony Orchestra was Benjamin Britten’s intellectual and emotional kinship with Dmitri Shostakovich. Heartache…