Sir Mark Elder was back on the scene of past triumphs last night as he returned to the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall – and he has not lost his taste for the slightly unexpected.This was a bill that featured both a knight (himself) and a dame – Imogen Cooper as concerto soloist (pictured below) – and its first outing pulled a gratifyingly large crowd for a programme that was in two respects somewhat off the beaten track. Sibelius’s Scènes historiques Suite no. 2 isn’t heard particularly frequently, and Dvořák’s Symphony no. 5 does not hold the place of his last two in popular esteem. Elder’s Read more ...

The greatest procession of mass movements ever composed merits the best line-up of soloists, both vocal and instrumental, as well as the perfect ensemble – small in size, big and rich in sound where needed – and inspired direction. That it was likely to get them seemed obvious from the advertised names, but last night, as always, Peter Whelan inspired everyone to go beyond what we might have imagined.He applies pressure points imperceptibly everywhere so that Bach opens out from period-style devotion to something more operatic, above all in the first choruses of the B minor Mass and Read more ...

Forty years ago, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born, and I heard Handel’s Solomon in concert for the first time. Charles Mackerras’s sprightly performance convinced me it was a masterpiece. Now I’m not so sure, despite the presence of two national singing treasures, Nardus Williams and Helen Charlston, and great double choruses superbly delivered by 32 vibrant voices under the ever-reliable guidance of John Butt. Bad librettos don’t usually detract from music as fine as Handel's, but this one takes the palm for silliness. Palms, in fact, and cedars and other Holy Land Read more ...

Turning Handel oratorio into opera can be a rewarding enterprise. Charles Edwards’ presentation of Joshua, over 15 years ago, for instance, was very effective for Opera North in using projection as well as costume design to make a parallel of the biblical story with Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. And the score offered some vintage material, including the original version of “See the conquering hero comes” and “O had I Jubal’s lyre”.Others have done similar things: Samson – based on Milton’s work in what he considered to be the style of Greek drama – is a text that cries out to be Read more ...

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 upside down in Bach’s Sixth Partita. It happened again last night when Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra hit 1788 with one of the three symphonic masterpieces Mozart composed in a single summer, the 39th.Problematic, on the other hand, was the first-half Mozart, third of the four concertos he composed for his beloved horn virtuoso Joseph Read more ...

The revival of Robert Carsen’s production of Handel’s Ariodante at the Opéra Garnier in Paris under the direction of Raphaël Pichon, with his Ensemble Pygmalion and a top-notch cast, is well worth a trip to Paris. At over four hours, it might seem daunting, but the show is as close to perfection as opera can be, bursting with vitality and emotion, and never feels a second too long.There are plenty of totally beguiling moments, but the high-point of the performance is provided by the young Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari. In the title role, she doesn’t just provide the beating heart of Read more ...

35 years ago, persona-now-non-grata John Eliot Gardiner revealed how performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito allying period instruments with great voices could electrify in a new way. And here we were last night with Pablo Heras-Casado, a conductor as at home in Wagner at Bayreuth as he clearly is with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, stunning us with a consistently vigilant and alive Mozart Requiem.The programme was typically inventive. It started with the ultimate joyburst, Bach’s Singet dem Herrn – “singet" as in zing it – with Heras- Read more ...

Manchester Camerata is enhancing its reputation for pioneering with three performances featuring Nick Martin’s new Violin Concerto, which it has commissioned, two of them in art galleries rather than conventional music venues.So the concerto had its world premiere in The Whitworth, Manchester’s university-linked gallery, with the second performance at The Hepworth in Huddersfield. There’s a reason for that: Martin has taken his inspiration from “a carved torso-sized, cradle-like form, in elm, with nine strings of fishing line” by Barbara Hepworth: it’s called Landscape Sculpture.In it ( Read more ...

The Buxton International Festival this year was lavish in its smaller-scale productions in addition to Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, the heavyweight offer of the opera programme. And outstanding among them was the combination of Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine: seen by director Daisy Evans not just as a double bill with an overlapping need for telephones on set, but as two sides of the same story.She took Bernstein’s picture of an American middle-aged couple whose marriage is on the rocks, and Poulenc’s of a woman on the verge of committing suicide after her lover Read more ...

Poor, slightly silly Semele fries at the sight of lover Jupiter casting off his mortal form, but in Congreve’s and Handel’s supposedly happy ending, everyone else rejoices that Bacchus is the offspring of this dalliance. Or do they? Not in the new production by Royal Opera supremo Oliver Mears, who’s always favoured the dark side. As in trendy dramas like TV’s Kaos, the gods are the callous rich, mortals their plaything servants.The style that guides the creepiness, with an ominous fireplace central in Annemarie Woods’ pointedly chilly, unpretty designs, isn’t always there in the singing ( Read more ...

Over 100 years ago, John Christie envisaged Wagner’s Parsifal with limited forces in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. He would have been amazed to see it arrive on the main stage this year. But émigrés Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch persuaded him that Mozart was the real country-house ideal. Le nozze di Figaro remains Glyndebourne’s perfect opera, and Mariame Clément’s new production, launched last night with the 588th performance here, keeps it real.Clément has a near-perfect cast, with Louse Alder and Huw Montague Rendall as the Almavivas sure harbingers of success (pictured below in Read more ...

Tchaikovsky has precisely two operas in the standard repertoire (including The Queen of Spades, currently playing at Garsington), and readers who love those works might well be forgiven for wondering what happened to the other eight or nine. On the evidence of Grange Park’s Mazeppa, the answer might seem to be pure mischance.In David Pountney’s production it comes across as a powerful, moving, often inspired drama, if not without certain problems that Tchaikovsky might have addressed if he hadn’t had the disconcerting habit of falling in love with his own characters.At bottom, the work is a Read more ...