tue 08/07/2025

Classical music

Prom 6, Verdi's Requiem, BBCNOW, Bancroft review - running the emotional gamut

Returning after ten months to the unique vasts of Albert’s colosseum, especially for a Verdi Requiem as powerful as this and a packed hall, felt like a rebirth. There was immediate purging in the focused whispers of the first “Requiem aeternam”s,...

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Prom 5, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bancroft review - a luxury orchestral cruise

This looked like a classic Prom in the grand old BBC tradition: two big but lesser-known pieces by pivotal figures (Schoenberg and Zemlinsky) played by a major non-metropolitan ensemble, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And so it proved, with...

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First Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Chan review - from the sublime to the mischievously meticulous

The first night of the BBC’s 2024 Proms season was illuminated by the blazing brilliance of Isata Kanneh-Mason’s performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto and the world premiere of Ben Nobuto’s witty video-game-inspired Hallelujah Sim. Hong...

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Classical CDs: Chorales, cathedrals and hardwood floors

 Beethoven: Diabelli Variations, Debussy: Préludes George Lepauw (piano) (Orchid Classics)Beethoven and Debussy don’t often share column space, but listening to these albums in succession proved to be an enjoyable experience. George Lepauw...

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BBC Proms 2024 Preview: theartsdesk recommends…

So maybe there’s a bigger quota of popular Proms, leading Stephen Walsh to lambast what he sees as "junk" to avoid. It surely doesn’t matter. Among the 89 concerts, some of them beyond the Royal Albert Hall, the mix of old and new, middle-of-the-...

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theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2024 - youth, experience and old mastery on the highest level

"The world meets in Pärnu", slogan for the 14th festival in Estonia's summer seaside capital, has held good ever since Paavo Järvi gathered native musicians and key players from the international teams he inspires to form what's now the Estonian...

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Classical CDs: Ballades, barcarolles and hammer blows

 Fauré: Complete Music for Solo Piano Lucas Debargue (Sony)In lots of ways I was ready to like this boxset of the complete Fauré music for solo piano, having long seen it as an extraordinary strand of the piano’s literature. But also perhaps I...

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NMC Recordings at 35, Dutch Church, London review - a fitting celebration

NMC Recordings has spent 35 years promoting contemporary music by British composers, and this commitment to both emerging and established voices was represented at this birthday concert in London last night, part of the Spitalfields Festival. From...

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Concert Theatre DSCH, Norwegian CO, QEH review - visually stunning, viscerally thrilling Shostakovich

This luminously persuasive, radically inventive performance of Shostakovich’s music begins – quite literally – at the end. Beneath a slowly revolving monochrome moon, a lone musician delivers a plangent rendition of the Moderato and Allegretto from...

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theartsdesk Q&A: violinist and music director Pekka Kuusisto on staged Shostakovich, Sibelius, sound architecture and folk fiddling

Lilac time in Oslo, a mini heatwave in June 2023, a dazzling Sunday morning the day after the darkness transfigured of Concert Theatre DSCH, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra’s from-memory Shostakovich music-drama. Pekka Kuusisto and I decide not to...

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Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Kenny, Spitalfields Music Festival review - layers behind a sweet Tower hour

Behind this poignant, simple-seeming hour of music for soprano and lute(s) lay a spider-web of connections between outsiders in the City: rebels, prisoners, immigrants, Black Londoners. Elizabeth Kenny’s programme note wove it all together...

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Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St Jude's review - Americana both fun and fierce

Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the sweet dream of Florence Price’s Adoration fit that bill. But An American in Paris sounded completely different...

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