19th century
Octets, Wigmore Hall review - Heath Quartet and star friends effervesceSaturday, 16 December 2017
To compose a masterpiece in your teens is rare enough; to choose the most elaborate form in chamber music, an octet for eight strings, ensures a peculiar kind of immortality. George Enescu, a still-underestimated genius described by protege Yehudi... Read more... |
Cendrillon, RNCM, Manchester review - magic and spectacleFriday, 15 December 2017
The Royal Northern College of Music’s production of Massenet’s Cendrillon has a particularly strong professional production team, and it shows. This is one of the most attractively spectacular operas the college has mounted for years.Director Olivia... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet review - a thoroughly enchanting performanceThursday, 14 December 2017
The familiar doesn’t have to get old. Last night at the Coliseum there were children in the boxes, adults in the circle and grandparents in the stalls. Seasonal favourite Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker brings all ages to the ballet — as well as... Read more... |
From Life, Royal Academy review - perplexingly aimlessMonday, 11 December 2017
Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from... Read more... |
Johnston, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - sheer adrenalin in early SibeliusThursday, 07 December 2017
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. He tried... Read more... |
Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, Wigmore Hall review - lyrical Brahms from veteran duoWednesday, 06 December 2017
Sonata no 1 – Sonata no 2 – Sonata no 3 – that’s barely a recital programme, it’s just a list. Fortunately, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt (pictured below by Neda Navae) have good musical reasons for presenting the Brahms violin... Read more... |
Darius Battiwalla, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester review - improvisation extraordinaireFriday, 01 December 2017
Organ improvisation is a remarkable art, prized in French musical culture particularly, and there was something highly appropriate in the choice of The Phantom of the Opera – a screening of the 1925 silent film with live accompaniment on the RNCM... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Old Vic review - Rhys Ifans takes on Scrooge, triumphantlyThursday, 30 November 2017
Fresh from the success of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jack Thorne now gives us his exuberant adaptation of another much-loved text. Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol is the well-worn morality fable seared into our collective memory... Read more... |
Mitsuko Uchida, RFH review - Schubert from rough to heavenlyWednesday, 29 November 2017
When you've found your living ideal for Schubert's sonatas - Elisabeth Leonskaja, surely - it can be a challenge to stay open-minded and welcome another take on the profundities. Mitsuko Uchida didn't make it easy for herself or us at the start by... Read more... |
'She has escaped from my Asylum!': The Woman in White returnsTuesday, 28 November 2017
The Woman in White insists on being told and retold. Wilkie Collins’s much loved thriller is perhaps the most widely and frequently adapted of all the great Victorian novels. In Marian Halcombe it has a resourceful heroine whose appeal doesn't rest... Read more... |
Semiramide, Royal Opera review - Rossini's Queen is backMonday, 20 November 2017
It has long been a mystery why no new production of Semiramide should have been staged at Covent Garden since 1887: un offesa terribile considering that this splendid melodramma tragico should have been the inaugural production of the Royal Italian... Read more... |
Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland review, National Gallery - light-filled northern vistasSaturday, 18 November 2017
Finland is celebrating its centenary this year and the National Gallery's exhibition of four paintings by Akseli Gallen-Kalela (1865-1931) of a very large lake in central Finland is a beguiling glimpse of the passion its inhabitants attach to its... Read more... |
