The week in classical: Berlin to Broadway; Le nozze di Figaro; BBC Symphony Orchestra – review

Opera North singers take a nimble turn through Kurt Weill’s songbook. Plus, a notable debut at Nevill Holt and Mariam Batsashvili at Maida Vale

Ferneyhough: La Terre Est Un Homme / Plötzlichkeit review – massive and mesmerising

While not quite a musical scandal on the level of the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the first performance of Brian Ferneyhough’s La Terre Est Un Homme in Glasgow in 1979 is remembered as a disaster; sabotaged, so the … Continue reading →

Holding out for a hero: the spirit of Sibelius is summoned to celebrate Finland’s centenary

Two of the UK’s major orchestras are conducted by Finns, and both men this week turned to their country’s national composer to mark the 100th anniversary of its independence

BBCSO/Oramo – Hillborg premiere showcases Batiashvili’s fearless playing

Lisa Batiashvili gave a tonally rich, technically immaculate performance in the first UK outing for Hillborg’s colourful but contrived second violin concerto

Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony (1920) CD review – fabulously assured, with fascinating fill-ups

Martyn Brabbins conducts the composer’s first revision of his symphony on a disc featuring early settings of Rossetti and Shakespeare and Variations for brass band

BBCSO/Vedernikov review – A rare outing for Bruch’s truculent double piano concerto

The composer’s troubled 1915 work was played by soloists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy; Thomas Larcher’s ravishing Red and Green was easier to enjoy

BBC Singers/Nash Ensemble/Hill; BBCSO/Ono review – British voices tell compelling stories

Two choral premieres – Judith Weir’s In the Land of Uz and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Hibiki – were of contrasting scales and themes, but both were imaginative and restrained

BBCSO/Weilerstein review – simpatico siblings power expressive Prom

The orchestra’s second Proms appearance this year saw Joshua and Alisa Weilerstein lead a smartly restrained recital of of Pascal Dusapin’s concerto

BBCSO/Davis review – mixed rehabilitation of Bliss’s bland Beatitudes

Andrew Davis’s attempt to give Arthur Bliss’s strange choral work dramatic shape and intensity foundered despite powerful, spiky orchestration

BBCSO/Oramo review – Varèse’s musical monoliths wreathed in majesty

The composer’s large-scale works were accompanied by pioneering and rarely heard pieces in one of the BBC’s Total Immersion days

The Exterminating Angel; Doctor Atomic review – incendiary Adès and Adams

Two living composers, two powerful operas, two striking performances

Doctor Atomic review – John Adams’s Oppenheimer docudrama overwhelms

Adams conducted with supreme conviction this unforgettable concert staging of his visionary account of the events leading up to the first atomic test in 1945

BBCSO/Bělohlávek review – unforced musical truthfulness

The instrumental colours of Dvořák’s quiet and introspective evening-long Requiem came to the fore in the conductor’s reunion with his former orchestra

Elgar: Symphony No 1; Introduction and Allegro CD review – notable for its clarity

Edward Gardner definitely puts refinement before moment-by-moment impact in his first venture into Elgar on disc. His treatment of the Introduction and Allegro – with the Doric Quartet joining the strings of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to provide the solo … Continue reading →

BBCSO/Young review – Eötvös’s raw new opera has urgency and panache

Albane Carrère and Russell Braun were the protagonists in Senza Sangue, Peter Eötvös’s dramatic one-acter conceived as a prelude to Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle