The opening of this tremendous piece reveals so much about a performance. Before the invasion, before the siege of Leningrad, there is buoyancy and uplift and hopefulness in the confidant and forthright theme which begins and indeed…
The dramatic and somewhat predictably mixed reaction to Barrie Kosky’s staging of Bizet’s Carmen at the Royal Opera House recently (a show first seen in Frankfurt in 2016) once again raised questions as to how far opera…
The two parts of William Finn and James Lapine’s brilliant urban opera Falsettos first came together in 1992 when the horrendous human cost of the AIDS epidemic was still incalculable. But March of the Falsettos (1981) and…
This is a terrific account of Mahler’s fledgling symphony – full of the rashness and impetuosity of youth and the wild imaginings that go hand in hand with it. Each time that eight-octave-deep “silence” of the opening…
The sound of tapping feet invokes a whole era of classic Broadway and Hollywood musicals and when the curtain rises on this tap-infused extravaganza it pauses eighteen inches or so off the stage to afford us our…
I barely recognise the symphony I know and love as being wild and wonderful, elemental, fantastical, startling, from this beautifully executed (well it is the Royal Concertgebouw) but oddly sanitised performance. It’s as if health and safety…
Late last year I attended the UK Premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No 2 performed by its spellbinding dedicatee – the extraordinary Lisa Batiashvili- and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo. I…
Late, late, Bartok – the pair of masterpieces that could and would have turned his fortunes around during his final years exiled in America. Financially embarrassed, terminally ill, it was not to be. Conductor and soloist are…
There’s a cunning (and witty) interplay of ideas at work here. Sport versus Art, better yet American Football versus Opera; an opera within an opera, better yet an Italian opera within an American opera. You can absolutely…
Last month’s focus on the Jarvi conducting dynasty has prompted me to reflect on the number of times Jarvi senior (father Neeme) has come out on top in my own comparative reviewing – not least on BBC…
