Genesis Suite, Barbican, 13.1.18 In 1943, as news of the Holocaust and the mass flight of refugees was coming through, a Jewish New York musician named Nat Shilkret had an idea for a musical re...Read More
Salome, Royal Opera House, 10.1.18 Richard Strauss based his Salome on Oscar Wilde’s play (written in French and banned in Britain) which turned on two taboo sexual obsessions: Herod’s for ...Read More
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
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