Prom 20: Wagner “Götterdämmerung”, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Royal Albert Hall (Review)
And so Wotan’s ravens flew home and at the twilight’s last gleaming the immortals were consumed by fire and water. All was finally and irrevocably redeemed by the power of love and the most beautiful of all…
Prom 15: Wagner “Die Walküre”, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Royal Albert Hall (Review)
An evening of high drama: a very public altercation between conductor and concert master, a Wagnerian memory lapse from the leading lady, but one of the most thrilling accounts of Die Walküre you will ever hope to…
Prom 14: Wagner “Das Rheingold”, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Royal Albert Hall (Review)
Senses we didn’t even know we had come alive with the sound of that E-flat sunk so deep in string basses that it can be felt as well as heard. But the frisson we experience as this…
Prom 13: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Barenboim, Royal Albert Hall – review
On the evidence of the series so far I doubt anyone was expecting Stravinsky’s favourite Beethoven Symphony – the 8th – to spring from the starting blocks with the kind of propulsive dynamism implicit in the composer’s…
Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Royal Festival Hall
The furtive opening bars of Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto No. 24 were shrouded in a mellowness of tone that made them welcoming rather than darkly unsettling and as the well upholstered sound of the venerable Staatskapelle…