Classical Reviews
The English Concert, Bezuidenhout, Mass in B Minor, St Martin-in-the-Fields review – solemnity and splendourFriday, 21 February 2025
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book of the Leipzig cantor’s choral and orchestral art. Its complex patchwork of manuscripts dating from different decades only came together for a full public performance in 1859: the year in which Wagner completed Tristan und Isolde. Read more... |
Sidorova, Philharmonia, Alsop, Royal Festival Hall review - ladies of the danceSaturday, 15 February 2025
George Gershwin called one of his early classic songs, first created by Fred and Adele Astaire, “Fascinating Rhythm”. It was that mesmeric pull that propelled last night’s Royal Festival Hall Concert from the Philharmonia and its principal guest conductor, Marin Alsop. Read more... |
MacMillan's Ordo Virtutum, BBC Singers, Jeannin, Milton Court review - dramatic journey of a medieval soulFriday, 14 February 2025
Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan? Admirable as it is to have extant words and music for a music-drama, morality play, call it what you will, by medieval pioneer Hildegard of Bingen, her imagining of a soul torn between virtues and Satan is inevitably one-dimensional. MacMillan finds variety and surprises in response to her text at ever turn of this 80-minute epic. Read more... |
Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a rainbow of British musicTuesday, 11 February 2025
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented poetry full justice. That “pennant universal” was reflected in two superlative soloists from South Africa and the USA, our national treasure of an Anglo-Italian conductor, an Argentinian chorus director and a raft of international names in chorus and orchestra who just happen to be UK citizens. Read more... |
Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguiling trip around the worldMonday, 10 February 2025
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper of this enjoyably esoteric evening. Dutch cellist Hadewych van Gent began the pianissimo movement of Vasks’ Gramata Cellam by creating a build-up of whistling harmonic effects on the A string, followed by a yearning feather-light improvisation in the cello’s upper registers that suddenly plunged vertiginously bass-wards. Read more... |
Manchester Collective, RNCM review - something special in new musicSaturday, 08 February 2025
When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness something special, to be remembered fondly. It doesn’t happen always, but I think it did for Héloïse Werner’s Hidden Mechanisms, which received its first performance in Manchester last night. Read more... |
Widmann, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - razor-sharp attack in adrenalin chargesFriday, 07 February 2025
Perhaps all great music counterpoints and comments on the times, but Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra have been searingly congruent. Before he took up his post as Chief Conductor, there were the extinction whispers of Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony the night before lockdown and the fury of VW’s Fourth on the eve of Boris Johnson’s election. Now the aggressive dynamism of Walton’s First raised us out of that sinking feeling as the USA worsens by the day. Read more... |
Nakariakov, SCO, Emelyanychev, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - a frenzied feast of contemporary classicsTuesday, 04 February 2025
What a delight to see an almost full Queen’s Hall for a programme solely of contemporary music. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s New Dimensions series, launched this season, sees a host of newer classical works performed and appears to be drawing in regular audience members as well as a younger crowd. Read more... |
Biss, BBCSO, Hrůša, Barbican review - electrifying Shostakovich at a crucial timeSaturday, 01 February 2025
At the end of an exhausting week in which Holocaust Memorial Day struck a more urgent note than ever as fascism started tearing through the USA, parts of this concert were bound to hit hard. That they did so to the power of 100 was thanks to the extraordinary impact of Jakub Hrůša, now recognised as one of the greats by British audiences as he waits to take up the full-time reins at the Royal Opera. The BBC Symphony Orchestra burned for him in fullest focus. Read more... |
BBC Singers, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place review - on the way to heaven via King's CrossSaturday, 01 February 2025
Just now, music about survival, transcendence and the afterlife may have a special resonance for the BBC Singers. After all, the supremely versatile century-old chamber choir has endured its own near-death experience – at the hands of the BBC top brass who, in 2023, planned to axe them. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The English Concert, Bezuidenhout, Mass in B Minor, St Marti...
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book...
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmi...
“Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the good prevail”. The refrain of Aeschylus’s chorus near the start of the Oresteia is alive and honoured in...
Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully wri...
“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers...
I'm Still Here review - powerful tale of repression and...
Just like Britain’s ‘stiff upper lip’, that indominable spirit in the face of adversity,...
Album: Panda Bear - Sinister Grift
Sinister Grift is Panda Bear’s first album since his 2022 Reset collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. Anyone anticipating...
Zero Day, Netflix review - can ex-President Robert De Niro s...
It seems that esteemed former US President George Mullen is...
Much Ado About Nothing, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - th...
Over the last few months, celebrity-driven West End productions have suffered some inglorious crashes. So there was a certain degree of...
Noah Davis, Barbican review - the ordinary made strangely co...
In 2013 the American artist, Noah Davis used a legacy left him by his father to create a museum of contemporary art in Arlington Heights, an area...
Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Theatre - Luke Thallon triumphs as...
The date, projected behind the stage before a word is spoken, is a clue - 14th April 1912. “Why so specific?” was my first thought...