fri 12/09/2025

Classical Reviews

Tsybuleva, Institut Français/TAM Estonia, St James Piccadilly

David Nice

Cherrypicking from 17 concerts to come up with the one by last year's Leeds International Piano Competition winner may seem a bit unfair to the French Institute's ever more ambitious annual It's All About Piano! Festival.

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Scenes from Faust, LSO, Harding, Barbican

Peter Quantrill

Some of us have waited years for this. The opportunity to see Schumann’s largest, most ambitious work was not to be missed. For this most literary of composers, setting the Alpha and Omega of German poetry was a labour of love, which he undertook in reverse, but with progressively less reliable inspiration.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Copland, Handel, Janáček

graham Rickson


Copland: Orchestral Works 1 BBC Philharmonic/John Wilson (Chandos)

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Davies, BBCSO, Knussen, Barbican

Bernard Hughes

Last night’s concert at the Barbican focused on the theme of dreams and night-time, centred around the UK premiere of Dream of the Song by George Benjamin. But the one piece on the programme that did not fit with the theme stole the show. Stravinsky’s American-period masterpiece Symphony in Three Movements supplied the energy and rhythmic impetus lacking elsewhere.

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Royal, Wood, SCO, Spanjaard, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Christopher Lambton

I expect that there will be a sense of mild disappointment within the ranks of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra that its great Brahms season did not come to quite the conclusion intended.

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LSO Futures, Roth, Barbican

Peter Quantrill

How can an orchestra perform the music of the future? This was the question posed by Francois-Xavier Roth, congenial maestro and charming educator, as the standard concerto for platform arrangers played out behind him on the floor of LSO St Luke’s. Roth had just offered one confident answer to the question, with the first performance of Dr Glaser’s Experiment by Darren Bloom.

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Liu, RLPO, Iorio, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Glyn Môn Hughes

A double dose of Einaudi may not be the best programming idea. A world premiere in the first half and then a UK premiere in the second part of the concert was, perhaps, overegging the musical recipe. But add to that some Respighi and some Bernstein, with conductor Damian Iorio in charge, and things turned out not so bad after all.

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Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey

Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we delighted here in a guide who proved as accomplished a presenter as she is a performer of genius.

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Seong-Jin Cho, St John's Smith Square, London

Jessica Duchen

It’s always heartening to see a full house for a debut recital, though when expectations run so high, the stakes for the pianist can be dangerously raised. No worries at St John’s Smith Square, though, for Seong-Jin Cho.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Diana Ambache

graham Rickson


Bach: The French Suites Peter Hill (piano) (Delphian)

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