Tchaikovsky
BBC Young Musician 2018 Final, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - sky-high standardsMonday, 14 May 2018
The BBC Young Musician final was a big event in Birmingham. It drew a capacity audience to Symphony Hall, as enthusiastic, engaged and encouraging as any of the competitors could have wished. After the prodigious talent on show in the section finals... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Scottish Opera review - sweepingly sumptuous TchaikovskySaturday, 28 April 2018
It’s 25 years since Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin last came to the Scottish Opera stage, and this brand new production, directed by Oliver Mears, DIrector of Opera at The Royal Opera, gives the stirring score a stately yet elusive grandeur. Based on... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Borgström, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Alec Frank-GemmillSaturday, 28 April 2018
Borgström: Violin Concerto, Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 Eldbjørg Hemsing (violin), Wiener Symphoniker/Olari Elts (BIS)Hjalmar Borgström sounds like the name of a BBC Four gumshoe, a melancholy detective solving crimes in downtown... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Tchaikovsky, Fred Hersch, Sheku Kanneh-MasonSaturday, 24 February 2018
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 MusicAeterna/Teodor Currentzis (Sony)There's a left field vintage recording of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique conducted by Otto Klemperer, a reading totally devoid of hysteria, complete with a laughably slow third movement... Read more... |
Baráti, Lyddon, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - Stravinsky's bright but derivative beginningsMonday, 05 February 2018
"You have to start somewhere," Debussy is reported to have said at the 1910 premiere of The Firebird. Which, at least, is a very good "somewhere" for Stravinsky, shot through with flashes of the personality to come. The Symphony in E flat of two... Read more... |
Grosvenor, Filarmonica della Scala, Chailly, Barbican review - Tchaikovsky’s force of destiny shines brightThursday, 25 January 2018
You could probably guess from the assembling audience that the orchestra making its Barbican debut last night came from Milan. That many mink coats rarely congregate in a London concert hall. And under the baton of its music director Riccardo... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet review - a thoroughly enchanting performanceThursday, 14 December 2017
The familiar doesn’t have to get old. Last night at the Coliseum there were children in the boxes, adults in the circle and grandparents in the stalls. Seasonal favourite Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker brings all ages to the ballet — as well as... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, Royal Ballet review - superb start to the festive dance seasonWednesday, 06 December 2017
For some people, the festive season starts with The Nutcracker. And as it happens, this year the opening night of Sir Peter Wright’s production for the Royal Ballet was also the performance beamed live to hundreds of cinemas around the UK and... Read more... |
Remembering Dmitri Hvorostovsky (1962-2017)Friday, 24 November 2017
A certain online scandalmonger and coffin-chaser likes to preface news of deaths in the musical world with "sadness" or "tragedy", usually when neither he nor we have heard of the person in question. But the end of Dmitri Hvorostovsky's two-and-a-... Read more... |
Soltani, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Barenboim, RFH review - passionate pilgrimagesMonday, 30 October 2017
A legendary name and the chance to change the face of a cruel condition set the stakes high for what Prince Charles, in his programme preface for this Southbank spectacular, told us was called the Stop MS Jacqueline du Pré Tribute Concert. There she... Read more... |
Khovanshchina/Eugene Onegin, Welsh National Opera review - Russian revivals strong and weakMonday, 02 October 2017
About Khovanshchina I once had serious doubts. Leaving aside its unfinished condition, it always struck me as what Wagnerians would call a bleeding chunk of history, unstructured, confused, over-researched and dramaturgically obscure. Three recent... Read more... |
Prom 63 review: Gerstein, BBCSO, Bychkov - total mastery of orchestral soundFriday, 01 September 2017
No-one, least of all the players, will forget Semyon Bychkov’s 2009 Proms appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a poleaxing interpretation of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. They had already made the history books this Proms season with a... Read more... |
