London Philharmonic Orchestra, Power, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Nothing follows Mahler 6 and surely nothing should precede it. Nothing. Even a piece as compelling as James MacMillan’s Viola Concerto here receiving its World Premiere under the extraordinary fingers of its dedicatee Lawrence Power. There’s only…
Janacek “The Cunning Little Vixen”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
It might be deduced that the only thing worse than working with children and animals would be working with children as animals. But Leos Janacek was unfazed by the old Hollywood adage and his cartoon-strip derived opera…
Wagner “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Some pieces you just have to trust and trust implicitly. When a text is as good as Wagner’s Die Meistersinger it’s a wise director who takes a step back and let the words, the characters, the bountiful…
LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall
Send in the clowns. Or at least that was Vladimir Jurowski’s musical thinking in bringing together the mighty foursome of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Haydn, and Shostakovich and seeing just how far their capricious natures might take us. The…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall
Fashion is a strange thing. There was a time when the César Franck Symphony was popular core repertoire. All the greats performed and recorded it – Monteux, Bernstein, Karajan. Suddenly it was out of vogue – obsolete,…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Kavakos, Wildner, Royal Festival Hall
There are a handful of examples that I can think of where an unknown conductor has stepped in at the eleventh-hour and created an overnight sensation. This was not one of them. And yet, credit where it…
LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski must have had a sixth sense about this programme beginning as it did with Debussy’s Prelude Des Pas sur la neige (“Foosteps in the Snow”) and ending with the sound of sleigh bells ushering in…
LPO/ Petrenko, Royal Festival Hall
What a journey we took here from the muted half-lights of Stravinsky’s Scherzo Fantastique to the tumultuous bell-laden prophecy at the close of Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony. Vasily Petrenko was at the helm of the London Philharmonic taking…