sat 16/08/2025

Holland

Royal Concertgebouw, Jansons, Barbican

There’s simply no orchestral sound quite like it. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra had barely done a bar of Bedřich Smetana’s overture to The Bartered Bride before I found myself grinning like a fool. It was as if I had stepped off a plane and...

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Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Wigmore Hall

Andrew Parrott, director of the Taverner Consort, once told me of a time he was playing harpsichord at the back of a largish orchestra. Confident that nothing he played would stand the remotest chance of being heard above the general cacophony, he “...

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The man who said too much

Wayne Eagling was famous for many things in his 25-year career at the Royal Ballet - not least for his rich girlfriends. There was Isabel Goldsmith, daughter of the late Sir James; there was Francesca Thyssen, with whom he lived for five years. "Who...

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