Austria
The Merry Widow, Glyndebourne review - fun and frolics in the EmbassyTuesday, 11 June 2024![]() Why would anyone want to stage a work like The Merry Widow in this day and age? Silly question. It’s the music, stupid. Of course, it’s an entertaining story and there are some good jokes. But I'd bet that if Heuberger had composed the music to this... Read more... |
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Sousa, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - Beethoven, younger than springtimeMonday, 20 May 2024![]() Better (much better, indeed) late than never. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique should have given their cycle of Beethoven symphonies at St Martin-in-the-Fields in May 2020, after touring to Spain and the US. A lot has happened since. The... Read more... |
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of lifeTuesday, 14 May 2024![]() Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often blithely chat about the works’ epic struggle between life and death, creation and destruction, joy and dread. In a comfy hall with a slick orchestra and a polished maestro, all of that... Read more... |
Josefowicz, LPO, Järvi, RFH review - friendly monstersMonday, 08 April 2024![]() At first glance, this looked like an odd coupling: Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto from 1931, all spiky neo-classicism and short-winded expressionist sparkle, as a tributary opening before the mighty rolling stream of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.Yet in... Read more... |
Schubert Piano Sonatas 4, Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - feverish and sometimes violentWednesday, 27 March 2024![]() “Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty in life. Dying, however, scares me shitless”.However hard one tries to remove these three final sonatas... Read more... |
Winterreise, Clayton, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, QEH review - new maps for the great journeyFriday, 15 March 2024![]() Like Hamlet or Fidelio, Schubert’s Winterreise can withstand and overcome (almost) any kind of re-imagining. In the case of Hans Zender’s 1993 “composed interpretation” of the work for chamber orchestra – and sundry sound effects – the new model has... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Salzburg Jazz & the City Festival - perfection in free venuesTuesday, 24 October 2023![]() As a cultural destination, Salzburg really is hard to beat. Each year, a million and a half tourists descend on this compact city with its baroque architectural delights, and a population of just 150,000. The city of Mozart and of the Salzburger... Read more... |
Prom 65: Bruckner's Eighth, BBCSO, Bychkov review - a friendly giantTuesday, 05 September 2023Bruckner's behemoth has always had its fervent champions – and its muttering sceptics. The 85-odd minutes of his Eighth Symphony, finally performed after major revisions in 1892, build into a titanic testament. Advocates read into it enough... Read more... |
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, RFH review - elegy and ecstasyThursday, 18 May 2023![]() Standing ovations on the less-than-passionate South Bank can have a dutiful, grudging quality. However, I’ve seldom heard more heartfelt ardour at the Royal Festival Hall than the acclaim for Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra last... Read more... |
Mahler’s Third Symphony, Philharmonia, Paavo Järvi, RFH review - phosphorescent glow, depths only glimpsedFriday, 17 March 2023![]() This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not... Read more... |
'Corsage' director Marie Kreutzer: 'Being beautiful is her only currency'Friday, 30 December 2022![]() It’s 1877, and Austria’s Empress Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) is first seen gasping under freezing water, skin blotchy with another extreme treatment to maintain her legendary beauty. Every day she constricts herself in her corset, as she’s constrained... Read more... |
Imogen Cooper, Wigmore Hall review - calm waters run deepMonday, 29 November 2021![]() On a night when any brooks running past the Wigmore Hall might have frozen almost solid, Imogen Cooper’s recital travelled on sparkling waters of the highest purity across almost a century of pianistic innovation.As well as the streams and fountains... Read more... |
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