tue 10/06/2025

Classical Reviews

Hough, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - where the wild things are

Boyd Tonkin

This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along with reflections on the climate crisis as it threatens the traditional bonds between nature and culture. So far, so piously programmatic. But what difference can such a high-minded schema make to the music made by the orchestra’s outdoorsy Finnish maestro, Santtu-Mathias Rouvali, and his colleagues? 

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Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - declaration of thrills to come

Robert Beale

If audience reaction is anything to go by, Kahchun Wong’s season-opening first concert officially in post as principal conductor of the Hallé was an outstanding success.

And the reception was deserved. Still young enough, with a mop of hair cascading over his forehead, to look like a Wunderkind, he has considerable experience behind him, with a career on both sides of the world – in south-east Asia and in Europe and America.

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Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review - Scarlatti miniatures outshine Brahms behemoth

Bernard Hughes

If Angela Hewitt’s recital last night at the Wigmore Hall was a meal, it would have been two light, fresh – but nourishing – courses, followed by a big suetty pudding, splendidly cooked but sitting slightly heavy on the stomach.

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Pavel Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - unpredictable magic

David Nice

All five finalists in the Leeds International Piano Competition, at which Pavel Kolesnikov was one of the jurors, should have been given tickets, transport and accommodation to hear his Wigmore recital the evening after the prizegiving. Not that supreme imagination can be taught, but to witness the degree of physical ease (and freeflowing concert wear) that allows all the miracles to happen would be a good lesson to so many tension-racked pianists, including some of Kolesnikov’s peers.

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Lewis, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - adding the Moon to The Planets

Robert Beale

The first piece by Grace-Evangeline Mason I heard was six years ago, a simple song in a multi-composer “Manchester Peace Song Cycle” performed at the Royal Northern College of Music when she was studying there.

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Bavouzet, Nemecz, McLachlan, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - finish line of a remarkable marathon

Robert Beale

Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.

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Donohoe, Roscoe, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - two great pianists celebrate 50 years

Robert Beale

A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two of the greatest pianists of their generation, who met at the Royal Northern College of Music, celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first collaboration there. 

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Wang, Lapwood, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - grace and power from two keyboard heroines

Boyd Tonkin

It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath with a disconcerting pair of shades. But the super-heroine pianist, who played Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, turned out to contribute the (comparatively) restrained and low-key element of a London Symphony Orchestra programme that culminated in a wall-shaking performance of Saint-Saëns’ "Organ" Symphony, with Anna Lapwood at the manuals.

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Beethoven Sonata Cycle 1, Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall review - running the gamut

David Nice

A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first half by rising to the challenge of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” - a title he suggests, in his series of first-rate online essays about the sonatas, might be replaced more appropriately with “Titanic”?

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Prom 71, Seong-Jin Cho review - refined Romantic journeys

Boyd Tonkin

Out of emergencies may come revelations. Sir András Schiff has broken his leg, and we wish him a super-speedy recovery. At the Proms, his promised Art of Fugue will have to wait. Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, a past winner of the Chopin Prize, stepped in yesterday with a late-night recital programme that at first glance could hardly have looked more alien to the austere grandeur of Bach’s contrapuntal epic.

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