Returning to the UK for the first time in 27 years, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra began its three-venue tour with blistering performances of two Western classics and music by the largely self-taught Akira Ifukube […]
Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Philadelphia Orchestra in this exciting performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the work that epitomizes the composer’s music perhaps more than any other. He brought out in distinctive […]
The evening opened with Matthias Pintscher leading the US premiere of his tone poem neharot, which he describes as ‘a tombeau, a requiem, a kaddish – for all the people we have lost’ in the […]
I once tried to introduce a friend to Bruckner via the Fifth Symphony. The concert did not go down well – ‘the work of a madman’ was just one of the reservations I recall. And […]
For the second of three concerts at Carnegie Hall, the LA Philharmonic included the New York premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dznot, the Mayan word for abyss or sinkhole and was inspired by the ‘cenotes’, a […]
Rimsky Korsakov’s third opera The Snow Maiden (premiered 1882) draws upon pagan Russian folklore (albeit mediated through a fairly recent play by Alexander Ostrovsky) about the appeasing of the sun god Yarilo, who is jealous […]
The evening opened with a refreshing and commanding account of the Beethoven, Manfred Honeck leaving no doubt as to his mastery of the Austro-German tradition. His robust but unforced approach elicited sumptuous playing,allowing the music […]
In recent years Sakari Oramo has established himself as a Mahlerian of distinction and tonight’s realisation proved a quietly audacious mix of trends old and new. Not that there was much attempt to emulate the […]
Leave aside for a moment the completeness of Igor Levit’s musicianship and consider the stamina and sheer physicality of a recital played without an interval – which, given his programme, would have been welcome – […]
Angela Hewitt’s recital brought together music variously conceived to entertain a royal patron, serve as a teaching manual, and consolidate youthful works which demonstrated a formidable keyboard technique. At some forty minutes Brahms’s Third Piano […]
