Author: Michael Church
Prom 71 – Trifonov’s mistaken approach to Mozart
Twenty-five-year-old Daniil Trifonov, currently basking in mega-stardom, may not be the best of the young pianists to have recently emerged from the former Soviet bloc – the Uzbek Behzod Abdurai... Read MoreNick van Bloss – and how he harnessed his Tourette’s syndrome
In 2011 I published the profile below of the pianist Nick van Bloss in ‘The Independent on Sunday’, at a time when he was taking tentative steps towards a renewed concert and recording ca... Read MorePCM 8 Cadogan; Prom 69 Barenboim – 2016
Soprano Carolyn Sampson, counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, and pianist Joseph Middleton gave a lunchtime Prom at the Cadogan Hall which was chamber music of the highest quality. The first half consisted of... Read MoreProms 67 and 68: Bolivars and Semiramide – 2016
Every time Gustavo Dudamel brings his Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra to London, they get a bit better: once a spirited youth orchestra, they are now grown up, and in technical terms approaching inte... Read MoreProm 63 – Bach’s Mass in B minor 2016
Bach’s Mass in B minor towers above all other choral works, and it can survive splendidly intact even with blemishes in performance; so it was with this one by Les Arts Florissants under the directi... Read MoreProm in the Multi-Storey Car-park, Peckham 2106
This would be a Prom like no other, we were told at the outset. And indeed it was, thanks to its unconventional auditorium: the low-ceilinged top floor of a multi-storey car-park in downtown Peckham, ... Read MoreProm 46, 2016
Ilan Volkov has grown steadily in stature as a conductor during his years in Scotland, but his direction of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Gerard Grisey’s Dérives was simply masterly. ‘Sp... Read MoreA Midsummer Night’s Dream, Glyndebourne, 2016
Peter Hall’s theatrical and operatic legacy is vast, but one of the productions at the heart of it is his A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which opened to universal plaudits in 1981. He and his creative... Read MoreBrahms at Verbier: notes for a Deutsche Grammophon CD
Fresh from his exertions with his Requiem, Brahms nonchalantly dismissed his first set of Liebeslieder-Waltzer in a letter to his publisher as ‘trifles’, though he was also pretty confident of the... Read More- 3 of 4
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