Reviews Index
by Sam Smith
Just how should one spend a Sunday evening in December when the need to lift spirits is as great as ever, but the annual round…
This was a perfectly balanced concert from the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Michael Collins, in which Mozart formed the backbone to the evening...
Davide Luciano has been wowing opera houses with his Figaro for a couple of years now, and his performance in Il Barbiere last Wednesday at...
Christian Gerhaher has a beautiful voice, he is fortunate in his accompanist, he is clearly a very self-effacing fellow and he loves the music he...
Puccini’s first opera is understood to be Le Villi, but until now anyone who has ever heard it would have been experiencing the two-act version,...
Holy Week in Naples has a historical tradition of being a musically turbid affair, with snatches of religious music from the open-doored churches mingling with...
No one who had made their own winter journey to the Muziekgebouw’s beautiful Grote Zaal on this perishing evening, can possibly have been left untouched...
Sarah Connolly is hugely popular, and her brilliance and intuitive understanding of the material she presented was, as always to the fore. In Debussy’s Chansons...
The most noticeable thing about Pavel Kolesnikov, aside from his youth (he’s 29 but looks a lot younger), is the size of his hands. When...
The first of the Barbican’s ‘Roots’ series kicked off on Sunday night with Ligeti’s surprisingly calm piece Lontano, a work which also received a performance...
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie, based on Seán O’Casey’s eponymous play, was written between 1997 and 1999 and premiered at English National Opera in 2000....
Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress of 1951 and Hogarth’s paintings both chart the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell as he comes into wealth, is then...
The vocal group Tenebrae was joined by Dame Sarah Connolly and Eugene Asti on Wednesday evening in a celebration of the composer and poet Ivor...
Tom Cairns’ simple, direct production of Verdi’s best-loved work, here revived by James Hurley, makes the perfect introduction to opera – paired with Massenet’s Cendrillon...
Handel originally wrote the oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, HWV 46a in 1707, and provided a second revised and expanded version, renamed...
“A man with no emotional commitments reassesses his life on his 35th birthday by reviewing his relationships with his married acquaintances and girlfriends. That is...
The short running time of Dido and Aeneas usually sees companies pair it with another one-act opera. In the case of English Touring Opera, however,...
This new production of Cendrillon and the revival of the 2014 La traviata mark fifty years of the Glyndebourne Tour; established in 1968 with the...
Handel wrote an astonishing nineteen works for the Covent Garden Theatre (twenty, if you count Oreste which lacked original music), including some of his greatest...
Graham Johnson’s innate understanding of the music he plays is always a joy to experience, and, on Thursday evening, the selection of Lieder, mélodies and...
If someone were asked to think of a halfway house between opera and jazz, the chances are they would not arrive at oratorio. That is,...
Festival Review: EFG London Jazz Festival 2018
Jóhann Jóhannsson: Last And First Men @ Barbican, London
Celebrating 50 years of the Glyndebourne Tour
The Good, The Bad & The Queen @ EartH, London
musicOMH’s Top 50 Albums Of 2018
Allegri Quartet @ King’s Place, London
Federico Albanese @ Purcell Room, London
The Twilight Sad @ Mill, Birmingham
