• Reviews

    TUESDAY 30TH MARCH 2010 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA/ MUTI Royal Festival Hall You always know when Riccardi Muti is in town: the Philharmonia Orchestra is celebrating another birthday. It’s now of pensionable age – 65 – and in fine…

  • Asides,  Reviews

    AN AUDIENCE WITH ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER The Lord works in mysterious ways. For years now Andrew Lloyd Webber has nursed the idea of a sequel to his most successful show The Phantom of the Opera, for years…

  • Reviews

    SATURDAY 20TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ JUROWSKI **** Royal Festival Hall Fateful prophecies and exultant perorations – the enduring spirits of Leos Janacek and Josef Suk ascend from the valley of the shadow of death and another…

  • Reviews

    SATURDAY 20TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ JUROWSKI **** Royal Festival Hall Fateful prophecies and exultant perorations – the enduring spirits of Leos Janacek and Josef Suk ascend from the valley of the shadow of death and another…

  • Reviews

    SATURDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ NEZET-SEGUIN **** Royal Festival Hall There’s a particular way of not just playing but feeling and touching French music. Watching Yannick Nezet-Seguin, without a baton, shape and sculpt Ravel’s Le Tombeau…

  • Reviews

    FRIDAY 12TH FEBRUARY 2010 DONIZETTI “THE ELIXIR OF LOVE” *** English National Opera You may wonder what the most archetypally homespun of Italian operas is doing in Kansas? But then again what sense does Italy make when…

  • Reviews

    THURSDAY 11TH FEBRUARY 2010 PROKOFIEV “THE GAMBLER” **** Royal Opera House Like some kind of cosmic roulette wheel Prokofiev’s mighty orchestra starts whirring as the word “Casino” appears, writ large in dozens of flashing bulbs. But Martin…

  • Reviews

    THURSDAY 4TH FEBRUARY 2010 MACIEJEWSKI “REQUIEM” ** Westminster Cathedral It’s quite a story: the exiled Polish composer Roman Maciejewski tenaciously pursuing his dream to complete his “anti-war” Requiem over 15 years and across several countries and only…

  • Reviews

    WEDNESDAY 3RD FEBRUARY 2010 NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC/ GILBERT** Barbican Hall The Americanisation of Magnus Lindberg was just the beginning. The New York Philharmonic was back in town and everything – even the other Finn on the programme,…

  • Reviews

    TUESDAY 2ND FEBRUARY 2010 STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN/ BARENBOIM ***** Royal Festival Hall The defining moment in Daniel Barenboim’s unforgettable Beethoven/ Schoenberg experience came from hearing Schoenberg’s exquisitely epigrammatic Five Orchestral Pieces transcend period and style to form a…