Mahler
The art of the transatlantic liner
Some time in the next few weeks, a great ocean liner will be lost at sea. One of the greatest,…
The joy of composers’ graves
I called on Hugo Wolf the other week, and he didn’t look too great. He wouldn’t, of course; he died…
A revelation: Delius’s Mass of Life at the Proms reviewed
Regarding Frederick Delius, how do we stand? In the 1930s, Sir Henry Wood believed that Proms audiences much preferred Delius…
Spellbinding: Herbert Blomstedt’s Mahler 9 reviewed
Ivor Cutler called silence the music of the cognoscenti. But there’s silence and there’s silence, and a regular concertgoer hears…
Heartfelt and thought-provoking: Eugene Onegin, at the Royal Opera, reviewed
The curtain is already up at the start of Ted Huffman’s new production of Eugene Onegin. The auditorium is lit…
Child’s play
‘Germany’s greatest artistic asset, its music, is in danger,’ warned The Spectator in June 1937. Reporting from the leading new-music…
In search of an ending
There are many Symphonies No. 10 by Gustav Mahler, or none. The situation is rare, if not unique, in the…
Follow the lieder
‘Popular’ classical music is a relative term. Show me someone who thinks Beethoven is surefire box office, and I’ll show……
Opera North’s Rite of Spring shows the advantages of confining the music to the pit
It was Stravinsky himself who suggested that, in order to preserve its difficulty, the opening bassoon solo of The Rite…
The Budapest Festival Orchestra make all other orchestra look routine and oafish
Looney Tunes was always at its best when soundtracked by a Hungarian gypsy dance. (Watch ‘Pigs in a Polka’ if…
Cold and confusing: Garsington’s Die Zauberflöte reviewed
The picnic hamper’s open, the bubbly is chilled, and country house opera is starting to eat itself. When you arrive…
Does Gerald Barry hate music?
Blue Gadoo is one of those cats whose face looks like it’s been bashed flat with a wok. He lives…
Embarrassing – but electrifying: Bernstein 100 reviewed
‘There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on,’ wrote the critic of…
Partying like it’s 1899: two lieder recitals reviewed
If a symphony is, as Mahler famously put it, ‘like the world’, then songs and lieder are like seeing that…
Salon Strauss
An opera without singers, a Strauss orchestra of just 16, and an early music ensemble playing Mahler: welcome to the…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
The sound of no hands clapping
‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic.…
Bowled over by Bruckner
The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work,…
Mistaken identity
This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…
Gustav Mahler
When I began listening to music seriously, in about 1950, I had read about Mahler but wasn’t able to hear…
The spaces in between
An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher
Bad conduct
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
The long goodbye
There’s been a clutch of middle-aged danseuses taking leave of life in one way or another recently. We’ve seen the…
Monky business
We ballet-goers may be the most self-deceiving audiences in theatre. Put a ‘new work’ in front of us and half…
High life
End of season is always bittersweet, the melting snows a bit like autumn leaves. But the days are longer and…
