fri 11/07/2025

Beethoven

Keenlyside, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Albert Hall

Boy, did I want to enjoy this Prom. On paper it should have been the highlight of the season. Young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been making his mark in London as principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with...

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Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi, Hahn, Royal Albert Hall

If the bust of Sir Henry Wood that watches over the stage of the Royal Albert Hall had come to life, Commendatore-like, during last night’s concert, I can’t help feel that he would have been smiling. Beethoven nights – once a popular Proms fixture...

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The BBC's new TV dawn for the Proms

Paul Lewis, Beethoven specialist and pioneering subject of the Q-Ball camera

For the couch-bound classical music lover, keeping up with the Proms is pretty straightforward. Step one: open bottle of agreeable claret. Step two: turn on Radio 3 and listen, or watch selected Proms on BBC Two or BBC Four. Or, indeed, catch up...

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Lewis, BBCSO, Bělohlávek; Pires, Royal Albert Hall

Two pianists, one indisputably great and the other probably destined to become so, lined up last night to show us why the Proms at its best is a true festival, not just a gaggle of summer concerts. First there was the prince of pearly classicism,...

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On Their Toes!, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham Hippodrome

Dusty Button and César Morales in 'Grosse Fuge': the choreographer Hans van Manen does basic instincts in ballet better than anyone alive

Hans van Manen does basic instincts in ballet better than anyone alive. The Dutch choreographer, nearly 78 and far too little exposed in Britain, is a near-contemporary of Kenneth MacMillan, another specialist in sexual relations, but where...

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Arditti Quartet, Bath Festival

To launch a music festival with the Arditti Quartet, as Bath has just almost done (a pair of dance events preceded them), is a bold enough gesture, if no bolder than for the Arditti to open up their Assembly Rooms concert with Beethoven’s Grosse...

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Thomas Adès, Barbican Hall

It's still not clear whether his clever, brilliantly orchestrated compositions are here to stay (though they're certainly having a good run at the moment). As a conductor, he's not yet nimble on his feet. Yet after yesterday evening's colossal...

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Musical hands across the ocean

The American Classical Orchestra is generously offering to lighten the gloom of Europeans trapped by the volcanic cloud in New York (although it's hardly the worst place for an enforced stopover). This Saturday the ACO performs the climactic concert...

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Philharmonia Orchestra, Muti, Royal Festival Hall

Back for another anniversary, Riccardo Muti: 'When he conducts the Philharmonia, the sound comes from the bottom upwards'

If all orchestras inspire a sense of loyalty to some degree, then the Philharmonia perhaps does it better than most. Mackerras is still performing with them, 54 years after he first conducted the orchestra; so is Maazel, who has clocked up 41 years...

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The Kreutzer Sonata

For scalpel-sharp dissection of the most vapid parts of Hollywood/LA life, told with low-budget digital flexibility that itself critiques studio indulgences, British director Bernard Rose is your man. He hit the note most viscerally in Ivansxtc a...

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OAE, Ivan Fischer, QEH

If Beethoven’s Third Symphony Eroica was the seismic upheaval, not just for Beethoven but for the entire symphonic movement, then the Second Symphony was most certainly the pre-shock. And we can be precise about the moment that Beethoven blows the...

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LSO, Gardiner, Barbican Hall

18th-century manners, 21st-century instruments - the best of both worlds or a clear conflict of purpose? One would hardly expect a period specialist of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s calibre and London’s most dynamic orchestra, the LSO, to be citing...

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