mon 22/09/2025

David Nice

David Nice's picture
Bio
The classical music and opera editor of theartsdesk, David writes, lectures and broadcasts on music. A former music critic for The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent, he has made regular appearances on BBC Radio 3, not least in the long-running series Building a Library. He has written short studies on Elgar, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and the history of opera, and is currently working on the second volume of his Prokofiev biography for Yale University Press. He runs two Zoom lecture series, Opera in Depth on Mondays and a symphonies course on Thursdays.

Articles By David Nice

Total Immersion: Sibelius the Storyteller, Barbican review - a feast of sagas and psychic masterpieces

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Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall review - power and grace in elegies and monuments

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Only an Octave Apart, Wilton's Music Hall review - instant charm, infinite variety

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Tosca, English National Opera review - a tale of two eras

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Purcell's Playhouse, Bevan, Barokksolistene, Eike, Purcell Room review - kaleidoscopic delights

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Aida, Royal Opera review - dour but disciplined

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Gurrelieder, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - everything in place, but still something’s missing

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theartsdesk at Musikfest Berlin - orchestral and choral rainbows around the clock

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Leonskaja, Staatskapelle Streichquartett, Wigmore Hall review - Brahms the chameleon

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BBC Proms 2022 - silence after Mass

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Prom 69, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner review - shock, fervour and total focus

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The Goldberg Variations, De Keersmaeker, Kolesnikov, Sadler's Wells review - keyboard harmony and atonal dance

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Prom 62, Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko review - hallucinogenic night's journey into day

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Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Friends, Bold Tendencies review - intimate tenderness under a car-park roof

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Prom 59, The Dream of Gerontius, Clayton, Barton, Platt, LPO, Gardner review - most sure in all its ways

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Patience, Charles Court Opera, Wilton's Music Hall review - bar room bliss

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latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing...

Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very...

Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fle...

Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša ...

The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre review - evasive fantasy, bl...

Why are the Irish such good storytellers? The historical perspective is that the oral tradition goes way, way back, allied to the gift of the gab...

Hadelich, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Man...

Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26...

Album: Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Plays Mulatu

The tour by the 81-year-old Mulatu Astatke which is currently under way and this album seem to be giving off different...

Music Reissues Weekly: Sly and the Family Stone - The First...

The remarkable The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 represents the first-ever release of a previously...

Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Heras-Casado, St Martin-in-the-Fields...

35 years ago, persona-now-non-grata John Eliot Gardiner revealed how performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito...

Dracula, Lyric Hammersmith review - hit-and-miss recasting o...

If a classic story is going to be told for the umpteenth time, there is a good bet it will come with a novel spin on it. So it proves...

Cho, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - finely-focused stormy w...

It was a hefty evening, as it needn't necessarily have been throughout, since Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony can conceal more darkness between the...