wed 14/05/2025

LPO

Classical CDs Weekly: Honegger, Paul Hillier, Libera

 Honegger: Une cantate de Noël, Pastorale d’été, Symphony No 4 London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, New London Childrens’ Choir/Jurowski (LPO)Arthur Honegger’s best-known work is his short, mechanistic portrayal of a steam engine, Pacific...

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Jansen, London Philharmonic, Vänskä, Royal Festival Hall

Noticed that nip in the air recently? The reason now is obvious: conductor Osmo Vänskä, the brisk wind from Minnesota, has blown into town, challenging London’s orchestral musicians to give beyond their best and uncover new layers in repertory works...

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Leiferkus, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

How odd that Musorgsky, a composer sanctified beyond his very individual deserts for making social statements in his art, should be feted by an orchestra, or rather an orchestral management, which says music and politics don't mix. They clearly have...

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BBC Proms: Bavouzet, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski

The world tour that the Proms offer this year touches down in no more fascinating musical country than Hungary, with three of its great composers, Liszt, Bartók and Kodály brought into the Albert Hall last night by the ever-stimulating Vladimir...

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Why Ticciati will be great for Glyndebourne

Robin Ticciati with the score of Janáček's Jenůfa at a Glyndebourne study day, 2009

Robin the boy wonder, as he was somewhat patronisingly dubbed during his prodigious rise to conducting stardom, will make a bracing Batman for Glyndebourne Festival Opera when he takes over from current music director Vladimir Jurowski in January...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Schubert, Stravinsky

Thomas Zehetmair lays down his fiddle to conduct kindred spirits Schubert and Gál

A 20th-century Austrian symphony receives a memorable first recording, coupled with a witty, rarely played slice of Schubert. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony is heard in a powerful reading recorded in the Royal Festival Hall. And we’ve an...

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L'elisir d'amore, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore must be the only opera from whose central lesson one can actually learn something. Its message - drink, chill out, back off and the girl will be yours - is as good a moral guide to life as any. But it was still...

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Another Brit conductor makes lightning progress

Nicholas Collon, already winning his laurels

Anyone who's attended an Aurora Orchestra concert at Kings Place will know that twentysomething conductor Nicholas Collon - oddly, the birth date seems elusive - is a force to be reckoned with. When he speaks, he looks as if butter wouldn't melt,...

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Brewer, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

Christine Brewer: Heroic model of a Strauss soprano, soars in the Four Last Songs

In a London Philharmonic season playing safer than before, principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski has earned the right to a few meat-and-two-veg programmes. Even in a concert containing more than a handful of your hundred best tunes, Wagnerian...

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Miloš Karadaglić, LPO Foyle Future Firsts, 100 Club

Bear with me while, like supergroomed rising star Miloš Karadaglić retuning his guitar to a mellower vein, I adjust my concert-hall vocab and describe this as a no-gimmicks sell-out gig underground with young musicians from the London Philharmonic’s...

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Ax, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

Vladimir Jurowski: A demonic twinkle in the eye

Send in the clowns. Or at least that was Vladimir Jurowski’s musical thinking in bringing together the mighty foursome of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Haydn and Shostakovich and seeing just how far their capricious natures might take us. The allusions and...

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Antonacci, LPO, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall

It's hard to believe that Yannick Nézet-Séguin could ever turn in a less-than-electrifying concert. According to theartsdesk, he did just that a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't there so I can't comment (though I can credit a rough edge or two). What I...

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