Classical Source Reviews

Local, metropolitan perceptions of Madama Butterfly have in recent years been monopolized by two competing realisations. Anthony Minghella’s only opera production, the iconic Coliseum show first staged in 2005 and shared with New York, is […]

On the occasion of this performance of The Flying Dutchman, leaden skies, chilly winds, and rather heavy rain beyond the half-open canopied auditorium of Holland Park seemed appropriately closer to the North Sea than a summer’s […]

It is always fascinating to encounter concert performances of works by composers whose mature or later pieces easily hold their sway in the core repertoire of the great opera houses worldwide. It gives a chance […]

The final program in Evgeny Kissin’s three-concert celebration of Shostakovich began with the composer’s penultimate creation, Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin, a setting of words spoken by the loathsome character who affected to be a poet […]

Shostakovich composed a single Sonata for each principal string instrument. ln the second of three Carnegie Hall concerts commemorating the 50th-anniversary of the composer’s death, Evgeny Kissin welcomed distinguished colleagues to perform them. The chronologically […]

While Vasily Petrenko has won critical plaudits for much of his work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, their current programme strand, ‘Lights in the Dark’, finds the team on a roll. Houses have been gratifyingly […]

Gustavo Dudamel, who becomes the NY Phil’s Music Director in 2026, led this American program, opening with Stravinsky, with whom the orchestra enjoys a strong connection. Following his 1925 US debut, the composer led the […]

An evening of fantasies, rich in storytelling, languor and psychedelic dreaming began with a roistering and tender account of Berlioz’s Overture. It revealed the LSO on blistering form, Pappano drawing out formidable string discipline in […]

The Silver Bell was Saint-Saëns’s first opera, composed in 1864, but it turned out to have a protracted gestation to its first performance in 1877 (the theatre originally expected to host the premiere went bankrupt, and […]

As is well known, the founders of the Glyndebourne Festival in the 1930s originally envisaged it to be something of an English Bayreuth. In the event a smaller scale opera festival was established, such that no […]