mon 18/08/2025

Shostakovich

Australian Youth Orchestra, Elder, Royal Albert Hall

Elder coaxed a strikingly mature performance from his young orchestra

The stage of the Royal Albert Hall has a rather unfortunate habit of making orchestras seem incidental. Stretching endlessly across, one of the world’s largest organs by way of backdrop, even the most generous conventional ensembles take on...

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Royal Ballet New Works, Linbury Studio Theatre, ROH

Inspired by Balanchine: Melissa Hamilton and Valeri Hristov in Viacheslav Samodurov's fine Trip Trac

Ninette de Valois said the solution to a shortage of choreographic talent was this: “You wait.” Waiting through the Nineties and early Noughties proved the Royal Ballet founder’s point - suddenly new distinctive ballet talent is cropping up all over...

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The Seckerson Tapes: Petrenko's Shostakovich Eight

Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's latest CD release

The charismatic St Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko has really been turning things around at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since he took over as principal conductor in 2005. With both standards and audiences on the up he has embarked...

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Concerto/The Judas Tree/Elite Syncopations, Royal Ballet

Another night, another cast, another Judas Tree (see first-night review below this) - and yet more proof of what a tough, durable, shape-shifting piece Kenneth MacMillan created in his last year of life. Recently theartsdesk interviewee Thiago...

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Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jansons, RFH

There was I, up to that point, very grateful to be hearing so fresh an approach to a heavyweight, admiring the way the crack Bavarian players sang and danced in every line that so often stays numb until the mechanics of horror let rip, but wondering...

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LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

This is the fifth time on theartsdesk that a review has been headed as above - so you must be thinking it had better be justified or bribery will be suspected. But it's not just the phosphorescent fascination that flickers around the charismatic...

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BlackSkyWhite, Institute of Contemporary Arts

I whizzed back to my previous reviews of BlackSkyWhite when I got home last night to check how much I’d enjoyed them in the past, so disappointing was their offering for the London International Mime Festival, USSR Was Here. Russians have colonised...

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LPO, Jurowski, RFH

Laid-back Tenerife and Gran Canaria won't know what's hit them when the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski land next week. The islands can expect to be sense-bombed by the jungly exuberance of Szymanowski and...

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Borodin Quartet, Wigmore Hall

They're still bringing Beethoven and Shostakovich to London, enriching the mix a little with the cross-referencing of Alfred Schnittke, but the personnel of the Borodin Quartet have changed again. Patriarch cellist Valentin Berlinsky...

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The Seckerson Tapes: Vasily Petrenko's Shostakovich

The charismatic St Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko has really been turning things around at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since he took over as Principal Conductor in 2005. With both standards and audiences on the up he has embarked...

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Classical Music CDs Round-Up 2

Padmore and Lewis: 'It seems unsatisfactory to recommend a Winterreise for the pianist, rather than the singer'

This month's round-up of the latest classical CDs takes in a major new Schubert recording by Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis, a pair of Shostakovich symphonies brought to fresh life in Liverpool under a young Russian conductor from the composer's home-...

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