Classical music
Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations and Trojan tragedySaturday, 05 July 2025
Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have also always programmed new music, and the centrepiece of this recital at the Wigmore Hall was a large-scale commission by... Read more... |
Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 - a personal tributeFriday, 27 June 2025
Alfred Brendel’s death earlier this month came as a shock, but it wasn’t unexpected. His health had gradually deteriorated over the last year or so, and I was fortunate to see him just a few days before he died. I visited him for one of our regular... Read more... |
Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 2 review - nine premieres, three young ensembles - and Allan ClaytonThursday, 26 June 2025
Actually it was a Thursday evening to Saturday experience, but what riches in seven concerts. The only Britten I heard was one of the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid as I approached the Red House on a hot Saturday morning, just too late for that... Read more... |
Schubertiade 3 at the Ragged Music Festival, Mile End review - five great musicians keep spirits soaringTuesday, 24 June 2025
Aldeburgh offered strong competition for the three evenings of Schubert at the discreetly restored Ragged School Museum, but I knew I had to return for the last event of Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy’s third festival here, much as I’d love to... Read more... |
Immersive Night Music Show, Makita, Londinium Ensemble, World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens - multimedia musings on a midsummer nightTuesday, 24 June 2025
To mark this year’s summer solstice, a small audience gathered at London’s newest concert venue, the World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens, a small and perfectly formed hall bristling with “state-of-the-art” acoustics and digital facilities. On a balmy... Read more... |
RNCM International Diploma Artists, BBC Philharmonic, MediaCity, Salford review - spotting stars of tomorrowSaturday, 21 June 2025
Two concerts in the BBC Philharmonic’s series in their own studio form the climax of studies at the Royal Northern College of Music for a small number of soloists on the postgraduate International Artist Diploma there, and also for some young... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Bells, whistles and bowing techniquesSaturday, 21 June 2025
Michel Béroff: Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)My associating French pianist Michel Béroff with ‘modern’ music says more about my age than it does about Béroff’s actual specialities. If you were looking for Messiaen in an early 1980s record... Read more... |
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Suzuki, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - the perfect temperature for BachFriday, 20 June 2025
In the Saxony of 1725 – still in the grip of Europe’s “Little Ice Age” – Bach and his musicians would seldom have had to deal with the sort of midsummer sauna that enveloped Trafalgar Square last night. Yet, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Masaaki... Read more... |
Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 1 review - dance to the music of timeWednesday, 18 June 2025
This year’s Aldeburgh Festival – the 76th – takes as its motto a line from Shelley‘s Prometheus Unbound. The poet speaks of despair “Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound”. With or without words, music shapes and voices feelings that would... Read more... |
Dandy, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a destination attainedMonday, 16 June 2025
The opening and closing concerts of a season tend to be statements of intent – to pursue a path of exploration or (latterly) to celebrate a destination attained. John Storgårds’ final programme of the BBC Philharmonic’s series at the Bridgewater... Read more... |
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with laughter and lightThursday, 12 June 2025
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader, Jordi Savall, executed a fiendishly rapid sequence of notes that sent the rosin from his bow rising up... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival - musical revelations, nature beyondTuesday, 10 June 2025
If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in recent years have involved Brahms, a composer I love more the older I get: the Second, A major, Piano... Read more... |
