by Melanie Eskenazi
We fortunate Londoners can always rely on two Messiahs in December — one early, usually in a less than atmospheric venue, then a second near…
by Sam Smith
One word would seem to sum up everything that is great in Joshua Bell’s playing, and that is pressure. He instinctively knows just how much...
by John-Pierre Joyce
Outwardly an eclectic programme, this concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Josep Pons contained an inner logic, making for broadly satisfying listening. For a...
by Sam Smith
Jonathan Miller’s 2010 production of L’elisir d’amore for English National Opera placed the action in the American Midwest while the Royal Opera employs the more...
by Melanie Eskenazi
This concert in the ‘Before and After’ series, held on the 30th anniversary of Britten’s death, was another finely balanced affair, beginning with the setting...
by Melanie Eskenazi
This recital was a model of planning — two great artists of the present, framed by two young singers whose careers are just beginning. The...
by Stephen Crowe
Delivered with restrained warmth, the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Jiří Bělohlávek presented Schumann’s Piano Concerto as fit for a cosy smoking-room. The occasional off-kilter moments...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Another decade, another gala… this time, his 80th, and the Wigmore Hall’s great champion was again honoured by a choice group of singers and pianists,...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Benjamin Britten would have been 99 last week, and this performance of one of his greatest compositions ushered in a feast of events in the...
by Christian Hoskins
Following the completion of his last symphony in London, Haydn returned to Vienna and rounded off his career with six inspired mass settings, which were...
by John-Pierre Joyce
The BBC Symphony Orchestra always takes a risk presenting new works by contemporary composers. But its decision to give the world premiere of Rolf Hind’s...
by Sam Smith
Alice Coote is surely one of the most consistently strong mezzo-sopranos on the circuit today. I certainly cannot recall an occasion when she had an...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Countertenors have always explored repertoire beyond the baroque, although to hear some critics you’d think that the likes of Daniels and Jaroussky were the first...
by John-Pierre Joyce
Anyone who reaches 60 deserves a celebration; but composer and conductor Oliver Knussen also merits a full retrospective, which is what the Barbican presented in...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Julius Caesar is the greatest of Handel’s operas, and one of the greatest of all opera seria; it contains arias which can stand with the...
by Johnny Johnson
While he shifts the period forward some two hundred years after the opera was written, Michael Grandage maintains its setting in Andalucia but at the...
by Johnny Johnson
Described as a “lyric fairy tale”, this story is not Disney’s Little Mermaid but draws on much deeper, darker strands of central European myth, legend...
