Disconcerting but often delightful new Bach transcriptions
Grade: B Everyone loves the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Rather fewer people love the sound of an unaccompanied organ,…
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
The excruciating tedium of John Tavener
The Edinburgh International Festival opened with John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, and I wish it hadn’t. Not that…
Three cheers for the Three Choirs Festival
The Welsh composer William Mathias died in 1992, aged 57. I was a teenager at the time, and the loss…
Brilliant rewrite of Shakey: Hamlet, at Buxton Opera House, reviewed
‘There is good music, bad music, and music by Ambroise Thomas,’ said Emmanuel Chabrier, but then, Chabrier said a lot…
Why has the world turned on the Waltz King?
On 17 June 1872, Johann Strauss II conducted the biggest concert of his life. The city was Boston, USA, and…
A cross between Peter Rabbit and Queen Victoria: Bliss: The Composer Conducts reviewed
Grade: A– There’s a classic trajectory for British composers: a five-decade evolution from Angry Young Man to Pillar of the…
A contradictory staging, but the music floods the ear with splendour: Semele at the Royal opera reviewed
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there – and opera directors really, really wish they didn’t.…
Brave and beautiful: Longborough’s Pelléas et Mélisande reviewed
King Arkel, in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, is almost blind, and he rules over a kingdom of darkness. Debussy’s score…
I’ve rarely seen a happier audience: Grange Festival’s Die Fledermaus reviewed
‘So suburban!’ That’s Prince Orlofsky’s catchphrase in the Grange Festival’s new production of Die Fledermaus, and he gets a lot…
Summer opera festivals have gone Wagner mad
Another week, another Wagner production at a summer opera festival. This never used to happen. When John Christie launched Glyndebourne…
Thrilling: Garsington’s Queen of Spades reviewed
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is one of those operas that under-promises on paper but over-delivers on stage. It’s hard…
Sincere, serious and beautiful: Glyndebourne’s Parsifal reviewed
‘Here time becomes space,’ says Gurnemanz in Act One of Parsifal, and true enough, the end of the new Glyndebourne…
The forgotten story of British opera
British opera was born with Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and then vanished for two-and-a-half centuries, apparently. Between the first performance…
Our half-time scorecard on the Royal Opera’s Ring cycle
With Die Walküre, the central themes of Barrie Kosky’s Ring cycle for the Royal Opera are starting to emerge, and…
Inspired: Scottish Opera’s Merry Widow reviewed
The Merry Widow was born in Vienna but she made her fortune in the West End and on Broadway. The…
Poulenc’s Stabat Mater – sacred, fervent and always on the verge of breaking into giggles
It’s funny what you see at orchestral concerts. See, that is, not just hear. If you weren’t in the hall…
Devastating: WNO’s Peter Grimes reviewed
Britten’s Peter Grimes turns 80 this June, and it’s still hard to credit it. The whole phenomenon, that is –…
Sunny Schubert and iridescent Ravel: album of the week
Grade: A Maurice Ravel was tougher than he looked. True, he dressed like a dandy and wrote an opera about…
The liberating force of musical modernism
It’s Arvo Part’s 90th birthday year, which is good news if you like your minimalism glum, low and very, very…
Splendid revival of an unsurpassed production: Royal Opera’s Turandot reviewed
Puccini’s Turandot is back at the Royal Opera in the 40-year old production by Andrei Serban and… well, guilty pleasure…
Barbara Hannigan needs to stop conducting while singing
Last week, Barbara Hannigan conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Haydn, Roussel, Ravel and Britten, though to be honest she…
