Tchaikovsky
Classical CDs Weekly: Daniel Elms, Hindemith, TchaikovskySaturday, 15 June 2019
Daniel Elms: Islandia (New Amsterdam Records)Composers have long taken inspiration from landscape, and much of Daniel Elms’ absorbing Islandia is rooted in the ambience, sights and sounds of his home city, Hull. If you’ve not been there, book... Read more... |
A Previn treasurySaturday, 02 March 2019
In a way, he was a second Bernstein. Only 11 years Lenny's junior, and living to the much riper age of 89 – his 90th birthday would have been on 6 April – André Previn was a film composer and arranger at the start of his 70-plus-year career, a jazz... Read more... |
Rachvelishvili, ROH Orchestra, Pappano, Royal Opera House review - perfect night and daySaturday, 09 February 2019
There's now something of a gala atmosphere when the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House takes to the Covent Garden stage with its music director Antonio Pappano. Admittedly some of the players are not the same as when he took up his tenure, but the... Read more... |
The Queen of Spades, Royal Opera review - uneven cast prey to overthought conceptMonday, 14 January 2019
Prince Yeletsky, one of the shortest roles for a principal baritone in opera but with the loveliest of arias, looms large in Stefan Herheim's concept of The Queen of Spades. Not so much as a name in Pushkin's perfect short story of 1834, a mere... Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London Coliseum review - a solid, go-to productionFriday, 04 January 2019
Diversity, and the need for more of it, is a hot potato in the theatre arts. Kudos, then, to English National Ballet and its director Tamara Rojo for the 23 nationalities represented within its ranks. And for the poster advertising the company’s... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Sadler's Wells - vivid, enchantingSaturday, 15 December 2018
The Matthew Bourne Swan Lake has become a classic. And – lest that word conjure up dusty tomes and a niggling sense of obligation – this is definitively not the old-but-worthy, improving-but-dull kind of classic. This is the "where has this been all... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, Royal Ballet review - a still-magical tale of two couplesTuesday, 04 December 2018
Once a year is never too often to revisit one of the most perfect of all orchestral scores (not just for the ballet), a climactic Russian Imperial Pas de deux and the old-fashioned magic of illusionist painted flats flying in and out across a... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican review - rethought masterpiece, stolid rarityFriday, 16 November 2018
Forget the latest International Tchaikovsky Competition winner (I almost have; only a dim memory of Dmitry Masleev's playing the notes in the obligatory First Piano Concerto, and nothing else, remains from an Istanbul performance). Had Pavel... Read more... |
Opolais, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Nelsons, RFH review - splendid and awful stretchesWednesday, 10 October 2018
Latvia is fighting fit. The recent elections did not see the expected victory for the pro-Kremlin Harmony party; support for the European Union and NATO will be well represented. Last week the feisty Lavtian Ambassador to the UK, Baiba Braže, landed... Read more... |
Proms 25 / 26 review - Russian masters, noodling guitar, late-night perfectionFriday, 03 August 2018
Sometimes the more modestly scaled Proms work best in the Albert Hall. Not that there was anything but vast ambition and electrifying communication from soprano Anna Prohaska and the 17-piece Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini, making that... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, London Coliseum review - a triumph for English National BalletThursday, 07 June 2018
When Tamara Rojo won the top job at English National Ballet in 2012, it looked like a poisoned chalice. Directors had come and gone, some of them with visionary ideas, but all were defeated by the company’s peculiar position as underdog to the... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal Ballet review - beautiful, heartfeltSaturday, 19 May 2018
A new Swan Lake at the Royal Ballet is a once-in-a-generation event. Liam Scarlett, choreographer of the production that opened this week, was a babe in arms when its predecessor was created by Anthony Dowell and Yolanda Sonnabend in 1987, and –... Read more... |
