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Opera review: Grimes on the Beach, Aldeburgh, Suffolk - an extraordinary spectacle at the water's edge

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:10:38 +0100

People said it was crazy, that the wind would drown the singers, that everyone would freeze – but there wasn't one spare place in the improvised 1800-seat auditorium on the shingle.

Classical review: Deborah Warner's ENO Death in Venice is brilliantly revived

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:43:41 +0100

Thomas Mann’s novella about the impossible love which springs in the breast of a blocked middle-aged writer as he watches a beautiful boy cavorting on the beach offered the perfect vehicle for Britten’s final opera.

Classical review: Madama Butterfly - Head down to the park to see a stunning Butterfly take flight

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:30:00 +0100

Paul Higgins's staging of Madama Butterfly is not easy to watch, and nor should it be.

Album: De Falla/Fauré etc, Poème d'un Jour – Ailyn Pérez/Iain Burnside (Opus Arte)

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:00:00 +0100

Although on a label that aims to capture the intimacy and electricity of live performance, only two items in Pérez's seductive programme of French and Spanish song with pianist Ian Burnside were recorded in concert, and they are the corkers: "Je suis encor tout étourdie" and "Adieu, notre petit table" from Massenet's Manon.

Classical review: Madama Butterfly, Holland Park Opera, London

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:48:13 +0100

The challenge which every designer of opera at Holland Park must meet is that posed by the country-house façade, which constitutes a pre-existing and non-negotiable set.

CD of lullabies by Hayley Westenra to be delivered to mothers who give birth on the same day as Kate

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:19:03 +0100

Expectant mothers who give birth on the same day as the Duchess of Cambridge can expect an extra delivery - an album of lullabies by soprano Hayley Westenra.

Jenni Murray to conduct BBC Philharmonic orchestra - despite having no musical training

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:56:08 +0100

Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray has announced that she will be conducting the BBC Philharmonic orchestra - despite not being able to read music.

Starving opera stars need 'beef' to sing says Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:31:40 +0100

Opera singers need plenty of “beef” to hit the high notes, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has claimed, as the soprano condemned the pressure on young girls to starve themselves in order to meet the demands of concert managers.

Classical review: Peter Grimes, Snape Maltings, Suffolk

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:39:39 +0100

It was in many ways appropriate that Aldeburgh’s Britten-centenary festival should open with a concert performance of Peter Grimes.

Classical review: Maometto secondo, Garsington Opera, Wormsley

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:00:19 +0100

It was a bold move by Garsington’s outgoing artistic director to schedule the two-centuries-late British premiere of Rossini’s epic Maometto secondo – subsequently scaled down as the more familiar Siege of Corinth - even if his successor was going to have to make it work. But was it a wise move?

Christian Zacharias interview: 'Bach? Too boring! Chopin? So corny …'

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:15:00 +0100

Artistic fame can blossom in unexpected places. Who would have predicted that the English comedian Norman Wisdom would find his most loyal audience in hermetically sealed Communist Albania?

Classical review: The Perfect American - Are you a man or a mouse, Walt?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:15:00 +0100

Early on in Phelim McDermott's production of The Perfect American for ENO, there is a moment that encapsulates the tension in Philip Glass's latest opera. Lit by the flicker of a giant film projector and dressed in the uniform waistcoats and visors of old-style animation artists, the 10 actors of the Improbable Skills Ensemble hold up 10 identical drawings of three perfect circles, one large, two small. It is up to the audience to reimagine those circles – to turn the large one into a face and the small ones into ears, and make the vital connection to the trademark-protected cartoon rodent first seen on screen in 1928. As Walt Disney later said, "It was all started by a mouse."

Album: Beethoven, Complete String Quartets Vol 2 - Belcea Quartet (Zig-Zag Territoires)

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 18:30:00 +0100

The second volume in the Belcea Quartet's Beethoven Cycle extends from the pastoralia of the third and fifth Opus 18 quartets to the tortured interior manifesto of the Grosse Fuge.

Classical review: Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Holland Park Opera, London

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:06:09 +0100

Written within two years of each other, and both set in dirt-poor villages in southern Italy, the twin peaks of operatic verismo employ similar methods to reach similar aesthetic goals.

Classical review: Steven Osborne, Queen Elizabeth Hall/ Richard Goode, Wigmore hall, London

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:49:43 +0100

For Olivier Messiaen, birds were ‘the most outstanding musicians on our planet’, and it was typical of his serene imperviousness to brute reality that, while Paris burned around him in 1944, he should garland the themes of his supreme piano work with birdsong.

Opera review: The Perfect American, Coliseum, London

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 13:35:19 +0100

Like one of those long-distance locomotives that its chorus incessantly sings about, Philip Glass’s new opera has been noisily puffing its way towards us ever since its Madrid premiere in January.

Classical review: Lohengrin - Love means never having to say who you really are

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:27:00 +0100

Love is seldom simple in Wagner's operas. There is always a curse or a price, some impossible condition to be met, some sacrifice to be made. In Lohengrin ("the favourite opera of all sensitive ladies", according to one 19th-century critic), sensitive Elsa stands falsely accused of the murder of her brother, Gottfried. The dreamboat hero who arrives to defend Elsa's honour is quick to say those three little words that she longs to hear, and quick to march her to the altar to the lily-scented strains of Wagner's wedding anthem, with the proviso that she should never ask his name. Alas, Elsa has three little words of her own to say, burning like chili pepper on her sensitive tongue: who are you?

Album: Bellini, Norma - Orchestra La Scintilla/Antonini/Bartoli/Jo/Osborn (Decca)

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:30:00 +0100

This period-instruments recording of Norma is an extension of Cecilia Bartoli's 2007 tribute to the career of Maria Malibran.

Opera of the week: The Perfect American, London Coliseum, London WC2

Fri, 31 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Based on Peter Stephan Jungk's fictionalised account of Walt Disney's dying days, the latest of Philip Glass's operas offers a mythic portrait of the megalomaniac behind Main Street USA's most beloved cartoon characters.

Ballet’s ‘bad boy’ Sergei Polunin bounds back on to centre stage

Tue, 28 May 2013 19:00:08 +0100

Gifted Ukrainian Sergei Polunin, dubbed “ballet’s bad boy” after he stunned the dance world with a public walkout from the Royal Ballet, today apologised for a more recent flight and admitted he has a “love-hate” relationship with the art form.

Claissical review: Ariadne auf Naxos - You know what will see off Jerry? A jolly old sing-song

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0100

First seen as part of a 1912 double bill, Ariadne auf Naxos was revised and reshaped as Europe plunged into the carnage of the First World War. Strauss was profoundly relieved when his son, Franz, was declared unfit for military service. But his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, had already served as a reservist when the now familiar version of their backstage comedy on high and low art premiered in Vienna in 1916, four days after the assassination of the prime minister in the dining room of a hotel a few minutes' walk from the opera house.

Album: Berlioz, Les Nuits d'été etc – SCO/Karen Cargill/Robin Ticciati (Linn)

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0100

Cargill wraps her sumptuous voice around the curves of Berlioz's song cycle in a performance of extraordinary musical delicacy, poetic sensitivity and emotional range.

Album review: Daniel Behle, Bach (Sony Classical)

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Best known for his interpretations of Schubert and Strauss lieder, young German tenor Daniel Behle here offers a programme of Bach cantatas arranged for flute and small ensemble, ranging from the lengthy, sombre da capo aria "Wo Wird in Diesem Jammertale" to the rippling flood of animated melisma that is "So Schnell ein Rauschend Wasser Schießt".

Album review: Eric Vloeimans, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Evensong (Challenge Classics)

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Featuring the jazz trumpeter accompanied by orchestra on pieces written by himself and/or collaborator Martin Fondse, Eric Vloeimans' Evensong is another album poised on the increasingly blurred cusp of classical and jazz.

Album review: Taverner Consort & Players, Monteverdi: L'Orfeo (Avie)

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Consort & Players have aptly chosen to record the first great operatic masterwork, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.

Stephen Fry to Ignite his passion for opera at festival

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:01:08 +0100

Stephen Fry has been named as the curator of an annual opera festival. The actor and comedian will take the helm at this year’s Deloitte Ignite festival which will explore the work of composers Verdi and Wagner.

Germany celebrates bicentennial of Richard Wagner

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:38:22 +0100

Germany today celebrated the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner, the 19th-century composer whose music has been hailed as sublime art at the height of Western culture even as he remains tainted by his visceral anti-Semitic views, which later found favour with the Nazis.

Classical review: La donna del lago, Royal Opera house, London

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:11:49 +0100

Who could take the plot of La donna del lago seriously? Probably not even its first audience in Naples.

Classical review: Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, East Sussex

Mon, 20 May 2013 01:00:25 +0100

Glyndebourne productions which put Glyndebourne itself on stage are nothing new, but for Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos director Katharina Thoma has harnessed a strand of history which has hitherto gone unremarked. In 1940, with opera off the menu, Glyndebourne became a reception centre for evacuee children.

Classical review: Wozzack, The Helmand years

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:46:38 +0100

Three years ago, on a train to Newcastle, I met a young soldier on leave from Helmand.

Album: Schubert, Winterreise - Alice Coote/Julius Drake (Wigmore Hall Live)

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:30:00 +0100

Female artists have sung Winterreise before, but not with the intensity of mezzo-soprano Alice Coote.

Glyndebourne survived the Second World War by opening its doors to evacuees from east London

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

An English country house; a rarefied ivory tower in which to explore high art; the performance of tragedy and comedy alike; dinner al fresco; and that's just on stage.

Classical review: Carrie Cracknell's brillantly original Wozzeck at the Coliseum

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:34:10 +0100

The real Johann Christian Woyzeck (1780-1824) was a jobbing soldier driven mad by an unhappy love-life and the vicissitudes of war, but it was the class system which decreed his beheading for the murder of his unfaithful wife. Georg Buchner, who had inside knowledge of his case, turned his story into a play presenting him as ‘rationally’ paranoid, in that the world really was out to get him. And this was also the premise underpinning Alban Berg’s Wozzeck a century later. All Wozzeck’s encounters with his social superiors – the Captain who accuses him of degeneracy, the Doctor who uses him as a scientific guinea-pig, and the priapic Drum Major who makes off with his wife – are designed to humiliate him beyond endurance.

Classical review: Don Carlo - Spite is even spikier second time around

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

In no other opera did Verdi dramatise the conflict between romantic desire and political imperative, church and state, idealism and repression with such devastating intensity as in Don Carlo. "Nothing in the drama is historical," he wrote, "but it contains a Shakesperean truth and profundity of characterisation." Those who see it as his greatest work would agree. But with greatness comes the great challenge of casting.

L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Gabrieli Consort/McCreesh, St John’s Smith Square, London

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:33:54 +0100

That a choral ode without a plot – a mere debate on how to live - should be as dramatic as L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is one of the miracles of Handel’s art.

Classical review: James Ehnes, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Karabits; Britten & Shostakovich (Onyx)

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

The haunting Spanish lilt of its first movement betrays the composer's anti-war sympathies in Britten's Violin Concerto Op 15, written in the late 1930s; the looming shadow of a larger war is then discernible in the tuba lurking behind the gay violin and piccolo of the second movement. But it's the way that James Ehnes closes the opening movement that most impresses, essaying a gossamer thread of such subtlety it becomes almost transparent.

Classical review: Ann Hallenberg, Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis; Hidden Handel (Naïve)

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

On Hidden Handel, Ann Hallenberg investigates rarely performed arias by Handel as substitutions or additions to existing works.

Classical review: Carolin Widmann, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Emilio Pomàrico, Morton Feldman: Violin and Orchestra (ECM New Series)

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

In Morton Feldman's lengthy 1979 piece "Violin and Orchestra", neither violin nor orchestra behaves as they do in the standard concerto format.

Classical review: Verdi’s Ballo, King’s Head Theatre, London

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:53:04 +0100

The news that OperaUpClose were planning to stage Verdi’s A Masked Ball in an IKEA store did not sound promising, as we’d been there before. In 2009 Flatpack Opera made Wembley IKEA the venue and subject of a work whose audience was joined by bemused shoppers, not all of whom were keen to be plunged into an art event which began in the bedsit department and ended in kitchens. At least OperaUpClose were doing it in a kosher theatre.

Classical review: Jennifer Pike, Sharp, Arensky, Kunhardt, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:26:38 +0100

Ever since she made history by winning the BBC Musician of the Year contest at the age of twelve, Jennifer Pike has been setting a furious pace as a performer, while maintaining a healthy academic balance.

Mitsuko Uchida: The plight of the music prodigy pushed too far, too fast

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Mitsuko Uchida does not seem easy to please. Her exacting standards apply to everything from her own piano playing, which is internationally revered, to chocolate – "this is the best in the world," she says, offering me a square of something very dark. There is darkness, too, to her words about how young musicians are faring today as they build careers in a cut-throat market, focused, in her view, excessively on rapid returns rather than lasting artistic substance.

Chart-topper Amy Dickson reclaims the joy of sax for classical fans

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:07:32 +0100

It is the brassy musical upstart, whose siren tone indicates the arrival of a femme fatale. But the saxophone is finally coming of age after an Australian musician topped the classical chart with an album that returns the instrument to its orchestral roots.

Queen's composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has leukaemia

Mon, 06 May 2013 02:03:37 +0100

The Queen's official composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is undergoing chemotherapy for leukaemia.

Classical review: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House, London

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:54:04 +0100

The reason for the buzz surrounding this revival became clear as Jonas Kaufmann launched into his rapturous opening aria. His phrasing was exquisite, and his projection - underscored by distant horn-calls - was perfect, with its gentle falls into half-voice; his whole being radiated ardent nobility.

Daniel Harding to conduct BBC Prom tribute to Sir Colin Davis

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:13:26 +0100

Daniel Harding will conduct a BBC Prom due to have been given by Sir Colin Davis who died last month aged 85.

Classical review: Keller Quartet (*)/ Charles Owen ()

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:25:15 +0100

The story of Bach’s pen slipping from his lifeless fingers while composing The Art of Fugue - which ends in mid-bar, notes hanging in the air - may be apocryphal, but this work will always be one of music’s sacred mysteries.

Terry Gilliam to make ENO comeback as opera bosses express cuts fears

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:20:33 +0100

The chiefs of the English National Opera believe that next month’s spending review will be “crucial” in shaping the future of the arts in Britain.

Classical review: Barbara Hannigan, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall, London

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:04:37 +0100

"For us, this is going to be the most demanding programme of the year," said Vladimir Jurowski in his prefatory chat. But the concert’s Thirties modernism would not, he said, be so demanding for listeners.

Album: Gesualdo-Maione, Tribulationem – Concerto Soave/Galassi/Aymes (Zig-zag)

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:30:00 +0100

Harpsichordist/organist Jean-Marc Aymes, harpist Mara Galassi, and Concerto Soave contrast the mannerist motets and madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo with a series of toccatas, ricercars and canzonas by his contemporary, Ascanio Maione.

Classical review: Budapest Festival Orchestra - Bohemian rhapsody marred by clash of styles

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:30:00 +0100

In 2011, Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra played two BBC Proms in one night. The first was a meticulously disciplined programme of Liszt and Mahler, the second a jamboree of party pieces and encores, selected by raffle from a list of some 200 works. Encores are the great disinhibitors of classical music and they have served Fischer and his orchestra well. Now 30 years old, the BFO can melt the cognoscenti with musical kitsch, compete with the finest in core symphonic repertoire, and deliver Beethoven with the transparency of period instruments. Whether this should all be attempted in one performance is another matter.

Barbican review: LSO, Monteverdi Choir, John Eliot Gardiner, Barbican, London

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:40:17 +0100

With performances of Apollon musagète and Oedipus Rex, John Eliot Gardiner has chosen to celebrate his seventieth birthday with two masterpieces from Stravinsky’s neo-classical period which could not be more different.

Classical review: West, Collon, RPO, Cadogan Hall, London

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:12:25 +0100

Ever since Bartok, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev hit their respective jackpots, composers have reserved the right to turn their ballets and operas into concert suites.

Classical review: Imogen Cooper, Ivan Fischer, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, London

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:21:09 +0100

The cadenza in a classical concerto is a curious thing. Originally devised as a way of letting the soloist show off, it became a commentary on the work it adorned, as well as a holiday from it: the soloist could take you on a switchback journey before bringing you safely home. These days, with so many other opportunities for display, its bravura function has faded, so soloists often use it instead as a slot to puff their own wares – as Kennedy does when he injects jazz and Gypsy music into his Brahms.

The birth of a new opera: Children know the score when it comes to songs

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:27:34 +0100

Is it all going too well? Unfettered progress always puts us on our guard and in a season that includes seven productions, when calamity chooses to stomp through a production, its reverberations extend well beyond the specific show it visits. If, as has happened, we lose a singer for a main stage production to illness, the process of correcting the problem affects everything. We only have so many pairs of hands so casting stutters, meetings get delayed and things look increasingly “tight”. But on the perverse theatrical road, we draw comfort from the bumps. Opera management is not a job upon which lives depend.

Classical review: Mansfield Park, Hampstead Garden Opera, Gatehouse Theatre, London

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:44:01 +0100

Considering the popularity of Jane Austen’s books as film fodder, it’s remarkable that no one has thought to turn one into an opera until now.

Classical review: Jonas Kaufmann, Philharmonia, Rieder, Royal Festival Hall, London

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:39:49 +0100

Verdi or Wagner? Posing the musical question of the year, tenor Jonas Kaufmann answers it by saying that he has vacillated between them, unable to decide whose music he prefers. He finally declares that they are mutually beneficial: "After singing Wagner you have an extra dose of power for the drama in Verdi, and after singing Verdi, it is much easier to sing Wagner, as the composer intended, with Italian legato." It was this latter course that he adopted at the Royal Festival Hall, backed by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Jochen Rieder.

Classical review: Sunken Garden - Wrap up! There's a nasty little bug going around ...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 20:40:00 +0100

Film and opera make an odd couple. However powerful the attraction, sometimes things just don't work out. Recent experiments in cohabitation have produced some startling results, from the breathtaking expressivity of José Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu's Les Paladins and the touching interplay of live and animated action in Netia Jones's Where the Wild Things Are to the Mexican stand-off of Mike Figgis's disastrous Lucretia Borgia.

Album: Janine Jansen, Schubert String Quartet/ Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (Decca)

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:30:00 +0100

All-star line-ups can be problematic in chamber music, but the depth of drama and colour in the stinging, swooning timbres identified by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen and her friends, violinist Boris Brovtsyn, viola players Maxim Rysanov and Amihal Grosz, and cellists Torleif Thedéen and Jens Peter Maintz, makes this Verklärte Nacht impressive.

Yundi, Royal Festival Hall (**)/ Murray Perahia, Barbican (*)

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:46:23 +0100

The pianist formerly known as Yundi Li may be a folk-hero back home, but the merry-go-round of Western fashion has not treated him kindly.

BBC Proms 2013 schedule in full

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:16:10 +0100

Here are the listings of the BBC Proms season 2013 in full:

BBC Proms season 2013 at a glance

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:48:20 +0100

Marking the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, Daniel Barenboim conducts his first Wagner opera in the UK in the first ever complete performance of the Ring cycle in a single Proms festival.

Marin Alsop to be first woman to conduct Last Night of The Proms after 119 years

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:00:21 +0100

More than a century of male-dominated baton wielding will finally be brought to an end when Marin Alsop becomes the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms.

Baritone George Beverly Shea dies aged 104

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:20:20 +0100

George Beverly Shea, whose booming baritone voice echoed through stadiums, squares and souls during a decades-long career with evangelist Billy Graham, has died aged 104.

Classical review: Nabucco, Royal Opera House, London

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:14:33 +0100

"If I rest, I rust," says the motto on Placido Domingo’s website, and at 71 he’s still resolutely proving it.

Placido Domingo to receive ceremonial Freedom of the City of London

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:34:11 +0100

Spanish opera singer Placido Domingo is in the UK today to receive the ceremonial Freedom of the City of London.

Funeral music: Ring-ding ding ding, Ted Heath is dead?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:50:53 +0100

Tomorrow, the music played at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral will be Elgar’s “Nimrod” and “I Vow To Thee My Country”. Given this week’s chart, er, ding-dong it was always unlikely that a tune from the Top 10 would soundtrack proceedings (Maggie never took to Duke Dumont). But what other inappropriate chart offerings have there been in the week of a former PM’s death?

Tributes pour in for 'one of the greatest musicians of our time' Sir Colin Davis

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:29:20 +0100

Tributes have poured in for Sir Colin Davis, the longest-serving principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), who has died at the age of 85.

Classical review: The British Schubert, Wigmore Hall, London

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:58:36 +0100

The word 'accompanist' comes loaded with prejudice: the singer is the thing, with the shadowy figure at the keyboard merely expected to play the notes. Yes, of course it’s nonsense, but until Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau publicly proclaimed the brilliance of the great Gerald Moore, this was the prevalent view.

Classical review: Sunken Garden, Barbican, London

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:50:46 +0100

The Dutch composer-director Michel van der Aa has made his name by mixing film and live action, and by taking control of every element of his productions in pursuit of his obsession with existential solitude.

LSO conductor Sir Colin Davis dies

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:36:06 +0100

Conductor Sir Colin Davis has died at the age of 85, the London Symphony Orchestra has announced.

Classical review: The Flying Dutchman - Love among the sewing machines and sarnies

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:30:00 +0100

Harry Fehr, director of the new Scottish Opera production of The Flying Dutchman, recently confessed that he would not like to sit next to Richard Wagner at dinner. This is not especially controversial: for all but the most uncritical fans, dining with an antisemitic, self-mythologising champagne revolutionary would be a grim prospect. But Fehr's production, so sympathetic in its depiction of an isolated community torn apart by the deathless Dutchman and his ghostly crew, betrays his distaste for the qualities that made Wagner Wagner.

Album: Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, Je voy le bon tens venir (Alpha)

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Early woodwind virtuoso François Lazarevitch, Les Musiciens and the earthy-toned singers Simone Sorini, Enea Sorini and Marc Busnel take us back to the time when street parties lasted a week or more.

Bronfman / Tilson Thomas / Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Festival Hall, London

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:26:10 +0100

The Vienna Philharmonic’s contribution to the Rest Is Noise festival would have been significant whatever they played, but when their conductor Michael Tilson Thomas mounted the podium, it was to apologise for the fact that they would be making very little noise at all.

Classical pianist with a paralysed arm wins BBC Music Magazine Award

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:25:10 +0100

Just over a decade ago, acclaimed classical pianist Janina Fialkowska discovered a tumour that would leave her left arm paralysed.

Milos, Valentina Lisitsa, Fabric, London

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:16:48 +0100

Getting into Buckingham Palace might have been easier than getting through the well-guarded door of this former Smithfield slaughter-house now converted into a nightclub: Universal and Bang&Olufsen had temporarily taken it over for some gentle reciprocal promotion.

George Benjamin Day, Wigmore Hall, London

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:02:28 +0100

Ethnomusicologists are like bees, with melodies being the pollen they transfer from culture to culture. In the 1950s the great American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax went on a song-collecting trip to Italy, and brought back recordings of a wealth of music which is now mostly extinct.

Classical review: Nabucco - Fifty shades of grey, the opera

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0100

First seen in Milan, Daniele Abbado's production of Nabucco is a penitentially grey experience. Redemption is slow to arrive in Verdi's Old Testament opera of captivity and oppression, the closest he got to writing an oratorio. The usual tropes of paternal and romantic love are sidelined in a drama of faith and power: heavy abstract nouns for two warring peoples to wrestle with, abuse or relinquish. The story follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered, and exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). Though the God that prevails is that of the Jews, the Babylonian deity Baal doesn't go down without a fight.

Album: Schulhoff/Ullmann/Tausky, Lost Generation – ECO/Parry/Anton/Ryan (Gramola)

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:30:00 +0100

Of the generation of Czech composers who perished in the death camps, Erwin Schulhoff is the most enigmatic.

Kirill Gerstein, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:52:51 +0100

One lesson to be drawn from Keith Jarrett’s recent Southbank recital was how porous the border now is between jazz piano and its classical counterpart.

Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall, London

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:26:36 +0100

Born in Russia, but rigorously trained in Germany from early childhood: a surprisingly large number of piano stars have emerged via this route, with 26-year-old Igor Levit prominent among them.

Bach Marathon, Royal Albert Hall, London

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:05:28 +0100

In the Easter splurge of Bach, John Eliot Gardiner’s ‘marathon’ was always going to stand out, and it marked the culmination of a lifelong crusade.

Kafka Fragments, Linbury Theatre, London

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:09:05 +0100

Few composers can inject as much significance into thirty seconds of music as Gyorgy Kurtag, and few writers have equalled the aphoristic terseness of Franz Kafka, so Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments represents a marriage made, if not in heaven, certainly in a grimly harmonious version of hell.

Nabucco, Royal Opera house, London

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:43:06 +0100

Topical references in programme notes printed in advance are risky, and Boris Berezovsky’s miserable demise has made Covent Garden’s essayist - for whom he represents the quintessential pampered exile - look silly.

Classical review: The Firework Maker's Daughter - Brace yourself for an explosive yarn

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:02:14 +0000

Parents and carers beware! Lila, fearless heroine of David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell's adaptation of Philip Pullman's The Firework Maker's Daughter, is a thoroughly disruptive influence. If the children who saw John Fulljames's show in Hull and Huddersfield last week aren't dreaming of becoming the world's greatest pyrotechnicians, they are probably dreaming of careers as singers, puppeteers, percussionists, composers or writers. Co-produced by Opera North, The Opera Group, ROH2 and the Palace Theatre, Watford, The Firework Maker's Daughter tells a terrific story and makes the crazy, sweaty, risky business of telling that story for a living look like terrific fun.

Album: Stravinsky, Le Sacre de Printemps - Berliner Philarmoniker/Rattle (EMI)

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Stravinsky's 1913 ballet, The Rite of Spring, premiered to catcalls and fisticuffs.

Album: Eleni Karaindrou, Concert in Athens (ECM)

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Film/theatre composer Karaindrou is celebrated in a grand hometown concert, with Jan Garbarek on sax and Kim Kashkashian on viola guesting with the Camerata Orchestra.

Viktoria Mullova, Paolo Giacometti ()/ Vilde Frang, Michail Lifits (*)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:58:44 +0000

Ever since her escape from Soviet Russia at the height of the Cold War, the violinist Viktoria Mullova has stayed firmly in the public eye.

Classical review: The Memory of WT Stead - I've got that sinking feeling …

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

When RMS Titanic sank in 1912, five Steinway pianos went down with her: two Model K uprights, two Model R uprights and one Model B drawing room grand, their brass feet bolted to the decks. Did they creak and sigh as they went down? Did the glue soften over the following days, weeks, years? Did the hammers float soundlessly up, the iron frame sink deeper into darkness? Inspired by the para-psychological writings of a journalist who died in the disaster, Lundahl&Seitl's participatory installation with pianist Cassie Yukawa in Steinway's piano showroom, The Memory of W T Stead, blots out light and everyday sound, sharpening one's ears for the blissful logic of a Bach fugue and the dreamy peregrinations of Ligeti's Pour Irina in a series of fragments and whispers.

Album: Brahms/Schumann/Schumann, Sonatas and Romances – Jennifer Pike/Tom Poster (Chandos)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The violinist's interpretation of Brahms's Sonata in G presents the young composer as a hungry outsider in the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann.

Album: Simone Dinnerstein/Tift Merritt, Night (Sony)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

A genuinely odd collaboration, this, between the classical pianist Dinnerstein and the country singer-songwriter Merritt.

Authenticity row erupts after violin played moments before the Titanic sank is 'discovered'

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:06:54 +0000

Historians and memorabilia collectors have gone to war over claims news that the violin of the Titanic’s famous band leader Wallace Hartley has been found more than a century on from the ship’s tragic sinking.

Andras Schiff, Wigmore Hall, London

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:24:05 +0000

When a major pianist tackles the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas the results are always fascinating. Daniel Barenboim’s Southbank performances in 2008 may have had such startling blemishes that he refused to let Radio 3 broadcast them, but they still glow majestically in the memory.

The Gospel According to the Other Mary, LA Philharmonic and Chorale, Dudamel, Barbican, London

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:46:38 +0000

A John Adams ‘Passion’ staged by his regular collaborator Peter Sellars sounded promising, even if the latter was going to ‘craft’ the libretto. As Sellars’s synopsis made clear, The Gospel According to the Other Mary would juxtapose Biblical events with some quintessentially Californian struggles.

The birth of a new opera: How to keep the whole family in a fantasy world

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:01:57 +0000

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of seven operas being produced for the Opera Holland Park 2013 season but it is the only one that was born here. So while minuscule when compared to the Cecil B DeMille processions of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Gioielli della Madonna, Alice thus occupies a prominence in our thinking because only time will tell if it will be the first in a string of commissioned operas or the last (the intent is indubitably the former). Performing in a world premiere of a work also places added pressure on the singers and artists. Fflur Wyn will contend with countless mind's eye images of Alice when she delivers her first words to the opening audience and children, who will be in the majority, can be harsh, unequivocal critics.

Win a pair of tickets to see Michel van der Aa's new opera Sunken Garden

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:42 +0000

This April, the English National Opera travels to the Barbican to present Sunken Garden, the latest work from award-winning composer, director and film-maker Michel van der Aa, with a libretto by Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell.

Classical review: Written on the Skin - Gourmet braised heart, sweet'n'sour

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

Adapted from the legend of Guillem de Cabestaing, the troubadour whose heart was fed to his lover by her husband, Written on Skin has arrived at the Royal Opera House garlanded with praise from its Aix-en-Provence premiere. George Benjamin's second opera with Martin Crimp is, in Crimp's words, "a hot story in a cool frame": a 90-minute sequence of gilded miniatures in which the contemporary is erased and the dead snap back to life, monitored by a septet of enigmatic angels.

Album: Telemann, 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin - Maya Magub (CDR)

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Published in 1735, Telemann's Fantasias were long dismissed as music for amateurs and compared unfavourably with Bach's Sonatas and Partitas.

Song and dance at opera as director Sir Antonio Pappano lays into underperforming stars

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:22 +0000

The Royal Opera House’s music director has taken aim at the “current generation” of opera singers, questioning their commitment after a rise in cancellations and suggesting their bodies were “weaker” than their predecessors.

Justin Bieber song 'Beauty And A Beat' gets classical revamp on Radio 3 for Comic Relief

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:43:55 +0000

Teen pop idol Justin Bieber is unlikely to be heard on highbrow Radio 3, but he will be this week when one of his hits gets a classical makeover.

Classical review: Imeneo, Britten Theatre, London

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:14:14 +0000

Imeneo was the last Italian opera Handel wrote, and also the shortest.

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Opera review: Grimes on the Beach, Aldeburgh, Suffolk - an extraordinary spectacle at the water's edge

Classical review: Deborah Warner's ENO Death in Venice is brilliantly revived

Classical review: Madama Butterfly - Head down to the park to see a stunning Butterfly take flight

Album: De Falla/Fauré etc, Poème d'un Jour – Ailyn Pérez/Iain Burnside (Opus Arte)

Classical review: Madama Butterfly, Holland Park Opera, London

CD of lullabies by Hayley Westenra to be delivered to mothers who give birth on the same day as Kate

Jenni Murray to conduct BBC Philharmonic orchestra - despite having no musical training

Starving opera stars need 'beef' to sing says Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

Classical review: Peter Grimes, Snape Maltings, Suffolk

Classical review: Maometto secondo, Garsington Opera, Wormsley

Christian Zacharias interview: 'Bach? Too boring! Chopin? So corny …'

Classical review: The Perfect American - Are you a man or a mouse, Walt?

Album: Beethoven, Complete String Quartets Vol 2 - Belcea Quartet (Zig-Zag Territoires)

Classical review: Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Holland Park Opera, London

Classical review: Steven Osborne, Queen Elizabeth Hall/ Richard Goode, Wigmore hall, London

Opera review: The Perfect American, Coliseum, London

Classical review: Lohengrin - Love means never having to say who you really are

Album: Bellini, Norma - Orchestra La Scintilla/Antonini/Bartoli/Jo/Osborn (Decca)

Opera of the week: The Perfect American, London Coliseum, London WC2

Ballet’s ‘bad boy’ Sergei Polunin bounds back on to centre stage

Claissical review: Ariadne auf Naxos - You know what will see off Jerry? A jolly old sing-song

Album: Berlioz, Les Nuits d'été etc – SCO/Karen Cargill/Robin Ticciati (Linn)

Album review: Daniel Behle, Bach (Sony Classical)

Album review: Eric Vloeimans, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Evensong (Challenge Classics)

Album review: Taverner Consort & Players, Monteverdi: L'Orfeo (Avie)

Stephen Fry to Ignite his passion for opera at festival

Germany celebrates bicentennial of Richard Wagner

Classical review: La donna del lago, Royal Opera house, London

Classical review: Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, East Sussex

Classical review: Wozzack, The Helmand years

Album: Schubert, Winterreise - Alice Coote/Julius Drake (Wigmore Hall Live)

Glyndebourne survived the Second World War by opening its doors to evacuees from east London

Classical review: Carrie Cracknell's brillantly original Wozzeck at the Coliseum

Classical review: Don Carlo - Spite is even spikier second time around

L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Gabrieli Consort/McCreesh, St John’s Smith Square, London

Classical review: James Ehnes, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Karabits; Britten & Shostakovich (Onyx)

Classical review: Ann Hallenberg, Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis; Hidden Handel (Naïve)

Classical review: Carolin Widmann, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Emilio Pomàrico, Morton Feldman: Violin and Orchestra (ECM New Series)

Classical review: Verdi’s Ballo, King’s Head Theatre, London

Classical review: Jennifer Pike, Sharp, Arensky, Kunhardt, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Mitsuko Uchida: The plight of the music prodigy pushed too far, too fast

Chart-topper Amy Dickson reclaims the joy of sax for classical fans

Queen's composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has leukaemia

Classical review: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House, London

Daniel Harding to conduct BBC Prom tribute to Sir Colin Davis

Classical review: Keller Quartet (*****)/ Charles Owen (****)

Terry Gilliam to make ENO comeback as opera bosses express cuts fears

Classical review: Barbara Hannigan, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall, London

Album: Gesualdo-Maione, Tribulationem – Concerto Soave/Galassi/Aymes (Zig-zag)

Classical review: Budapest Festival Orchestra - Bohemian rhapsody marred by clash of styles

Barbican review: LSO, Monteverdi Choir, John Eliot Gardiner, Barbican, London

Classical review: West, Collon, RPO, Cadogan Hall, London

Classical review: Imogen Cooper, Ivan Fischer, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, London

The birth of a new opera: Children know the score when it comes to songs

Classical review: Mansfield Park, Hampstead Garden Opera, Gatehouse Theatre, London

Classical review: Jonas Kaufmann, Philharmonia, Rieder, Royal Festival Hall, London

Classical review: Sunken Garden - Wrap up! There's a nasty little bug going around ...

Album: Janine Jansen, Schubert String Quartet/ Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (Decca)

Yundi, Royal Festival Hall (****)/ Murray Perahia, Barbican (***)

BBC Proms 2013 schedule in full

BBC Proms season 2013 at a glance

Marin Alsop to be first woman to conduct Last Night of The Proms after 119 years

Baritone George Beverly Shea dies aged 104

Classical review: Nabucco, Royal Opera House, London

Placido Domingo to receive ceremonial Freedom of the City of London

Funeral music: Ring-ding ding ding, Ted Heath is dead?

Tributes pour in for 'one of the greatest musicians of our time' Sir Colin Davis

Classical review: The British Schubert, Wigmore Hall, London

Classical review: Sunken Garden, Barbican, London

LSO conductor Sir Colin Davis dies

Classical review: The Flying Dutchman - Love among the sewing machines and sarnies

Album: Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, Je voy le bon tens venir (Alpha)

Bronfman / Tilson Thomas / Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Festival Hall, London

Classical pianist with a paralysed arm wins BBC Music Magazine Award

Milos, Valentina Lisitsa, Fabric, London

George Benjamin Day, Wigmore Hall, London

Classical review: Nabucco - Fifty shades of grey, the opera

Album: Schulhoff/Ullmann/Tausky, Lost Generation – ECO/Parry/Anton/Ryan (Gramola)

Kirill Gerstein, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Classical review: Keller Quartet (*)/ Charles Owen ()

Yundi, Royal Festival Hall (**)/ Murray Perahia, Barbican (*)

Viktoria Mullova, Paolo Giacometti ()/ Vilde Frang, Michail Lifits (*)