Classical music
theartsdesk at the New Ross Piano Festival - Finghin Collins’ musical rainbowFriday, 03 October 2025
High on the hill of fascinating New Ross in County Wexford sits its greatest treasure, the ruined 13th century Gothic beauty of St Mary’s. Unless you come at it from the east, its glories are concealed behind the working church which completes it... Read more... |
Scott, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, RIAM, Dublin review - towards a Mozart masterpieceSunday, 05 October 2025
One miracle of musical performance is that a work you’ve loved for years can be revealed as never before in an outstanding interpretation. That happened to me last week at the New Ross Piano Festival when 22-year-old pianist Magdalene Cho turned us... Read more... |
France, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - the sound of other worldsSaturday, 04 October 2025
Even in the 21st century, it may not take that long for an outlandish literary experiment to jump genres and become an established musical classic. In 2008, I enthusiastically reviewed a strange, poetic, almost Beckett-like novella by the writer and... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Voice flutes, flugelhorns and frothSaturday, 04 October 2025
Corelli/Handel: Sonatas Michaela Koudelková (recorders), Monika Knoblochová (harpsichord), Libor Mašek (cello), Jan Krejča (theorbo) (Supraphon)This disc’s bright, piquant flavour makes it an irresistible acquisition. I dived... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Britten Sinfonia, Shave, Milton Court - a grin and a big beaming smileFriday, 03 October 2025
Schubert’s Fifth Symphony is one of those pieces whose existence in the modern world hangs on the most tenuous of threads. After its posthumous premiere the score was lost for half a century before a set of parts resurfaced, and the work was saved... Read more... |
Lapwood, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - journeys into spaceFriday, 03 October 2025
Kahchun Wong’s second Bridgewater Hall concert of the new season was partly an introduction to the Hallé’s artist-in-residence for 2025-26, Anna Lapwood. The star organist brought a new piece by Max Richter for organ, choir and orchestra and a... Read more... |
First Person: Manchester Camerata's Head of Artistic Planning Clara Marshall Cawley on questioning the status quoTuesday, 30 September 2025
Over the past decade, Manchester Camerata has gained a reputation for continually innovating and redefining what an orchestra can do. But what does this really mean? For us, this means always questioning the status quo, asking what the impact is,... Read more... |
Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place review - music of hope from a young composerSaturday, 27 September 2025
Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of contemporary pieces – including several premieres – by horn superstar Ben Goldscheider and string quartet Brother Tree Sound, “curated”, as the current lingo has it, by young composer Ben Nobuto... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: composer Donghoon Shin on his new concerto for pianist Seong-Jin ChoSaturday, 27 September 2025
Donghoon Shin has a taste for the esoteric – a love of labyrinths, literary puzzles, and contradictory aspects of the self. One of his favourite authors is the Argentinian essayist and short-story writer, Jorge Luis Borges, whose perspective... Read more... |
Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - moving lyricism in Elgar’s concertoFriday, 26 September 2025
Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist in their performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the season’s opening concert at the Bridgewater Hall... Read more... |
Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manchester review - joy, insight, imagination and unanimityWednesday, 24 September 2025
The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester Camerata that marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the RNCM’s Junior Fellowship programme.For... Read more... |
Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing emotional workoutsMonday, 22 September 2025
Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very eve of lockdown in 2020. The work’s dying fall then was echoed by the spectral drift ending Vaughan... Read more... |
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