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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…