15 February 2012 09:55 AM
The birth of Schubert’s Winterreise song-cycle was suitably poignant. Wilhelm Muller humbly declared that his poems needed music to infuse them with life, but died unaware that Schubert was turning them into a libretto.
13 February 2012 10:40 AM
Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is a long and convoluted work which usually comes over as an implausible amalgam of Faust and Coppelia.
13 February 2012 10:37 AM
The American pianist Richard Goode doesn’t give many recitals, but his uniquely personal vision ensures that each one is special.
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
A cleverly updated version of Puccini's Wild West opera sees a lovelorn innocent fall prey to a feckless drug dealer
12 February 2012 12:00 AM
In a joyfully discombobulating programme, Luciano Berio's mischief-making orchestration of Mahler's "Six Early Songs" uses the Mahlerian paintbox in an almost anti-Mahlerian, jaunty fashion. "Rendering" applies a Stravinskian spritz of lemon juice to Schubert's delicate symphonic sketches.
10 February 2012 10:00 AM
I’ve reviewed opera in some unlikely places – a telephone box, the stairways of a derelict town hall, the kitchen department of Wembley IKEA – but the labyrinth of tunnels under Waterloo made the unlikeliest venue yet.
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
These five pieces ably summarise the ferment of creativity unleashed in the aftermath of the First World War, from Bartók's outrageous ballet suite The Miraculous Mandarin, with its theme of prostitution and murder, and its grotesque dances to Prokofiev's Scythian Suite, a whirling-dervish concatenation of evil gods, monsters, sacrifice and violence.
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
An instructive contrast with Music from the Machine Age: while the change in European culture was diversely reflected by composers, upheavals in Chinese culture seem to have inspired the most mawkish of music, notably the "Yellow River Concerto" based on a 1939 cantata by Xian Xinghai, itself based on traditional folk melodies, and recast during the Cultural Revolution by composers apparently determined to smother it in syrup.
10 February 2012 12:00 AM
Taking as its theme the use of psalms in choral music, this anthology links the liturgies of Jewish and Christian traditions, represented respectively by Leonard Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" and various European strains from Byrd and Allegri to Purcell and Parry.
08 February 2012 11:54 AM
There is really very little that Marc-André Hamelin can’t or won’t do on or with a piano and he did most of it in this characteristically supersonic recital - including one wholesale assault on the Wigmore Steinway’s bottom octave with his fists.
07 February 2012 10:50 AM
There are choral societies and there are choral societies – and Crouch End Festival Chorus is one of the more interesting.
05 February 2012 12:47 PM
Bruckner’s unfinished final symphony - the 9th - poses many questions, none more perplexing than what might have been in terms of its absent finale.
05 February 2012 12:00 AM
Bellini's best-known opera enjoys high drama and distinguished singing
05 February 2012 12:00 AM
Philippe Herreweghe's survey of Brahms' works for choir and orchestra is flooded with light.
03 February 2012 12:00 AM
Heitor Villa-Lobos's prolific output ranged from symphonies to movie scores to folkloric representations of the diverse culture of his native Brazil.
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