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 More
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 More
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 More
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 More
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 More
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 More
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 More
Sardonically christened ‘Lisztomania’ by the German poet Heinrich Heine, an infectious disease swept through musical Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Women were its main victims, with fetishi...Read More
Barbican: Murray Perahia Jun 20 Royal Festival Hall: Richard Goode May 25 Wigmore Hall: Till Fellner May 30; Yevgeny Sudbin June 16; St James’s Church, Piccadilly: June 17 Murray Perahia is o...Read More
A youth opera about adolescent alienation? We’ve watched too many of them founder in their own plodding worthiness, and the heart sank at the prospect of yet another, particularly one travelling und...Read More