Simon Trpceski and friends, Wigmore Hall, 21.1.18 We are accustomed to thinking of Simon Trpceski as a superlative pianist with a hotline to Beethoven, Brahms and the most rebarbative music of ...Read More
Wigmore Hall: Gabriela Montero, Nov 14; Daniil Trifonov, Dec 7u; Ivana Gavric, Dec 28 St John’s Smith Square: Vikingur Olafsson, Nov 15; Julian Jacobson, Nov 26 It’s not keyboard artistry w...Read More
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall, 26.1.18 There’s something heroic about Angela Hewitt’s Bach. This Canadian pianist has made Bach’s keyboard music the core of her performing life, twice taking it on...Read More
Satyagraha, ENO, 1.1.18 ‘Masterpiece’ – like ‘great’, ‘iconic’, and ‘legendary’ – is a word which should be used sparingly by critics, if at all. But it is absolutel...Read More
Drum children There’s a felicitous double meaning in Kodo, the name of the celebrated Japanese drumming ensemble. Its written characters mean ‘drum child’, but an infinitesimally different...Read More
Liza Ferschtman/Roman Rabinovich, Wigmore Hall, 30.12.17 Roman Rabinovich – credit Balazs Borocz When a work is described as ‘uncommonly difficult for all concerned’, as Gerald Larner...Read More
Simon O’Neill/Christian Gerhaher/London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle: Barbican, 13.12.17 The last major work composed by Richard Strauss, and also by a mile the most beautiful, Metamorphos...Read More
Early Opera Company,Wigmore Hall, 8.12.17 Everyone knows the overture to Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Te Deum, though few have heard of that seventeenth-century French composer. After being pre...Read More
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Royal Opera House, 2.12.17 Damiano Michieletto’s production of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci looks like becoming one of Covent...Read More
Semiramide, Royal Opera House, 22.11.17 Rossini’s Semiramide premiered in Venice in 1823, and throughout the nineteenth century it was a popular vehicle for great voices, but in the twentieth...Read More