Mahler
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…
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,…
Gustav Mahler
When I began listening to music seriously, in about 1950, I had read about Mahler but wasn’t able to hear…
Why we love unfinished art
The unfinished is, of course, something which tells us about the history of a work of art’s creation. A work…
Orchestral conductors would be much better if they tried performing Renaissance music
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
Birmingham Royal Ballet review: A Father Ted Carmina Burana
We ballet-goers may be the most self-deceiving audiences in theatre. Put a ‘new work’ in front of us and half…
Even a perfect opera such as Don Giovanni improves with a good red
End of season is always bittersweet, the melting snows a bit like autumn leaves. But the days are longer and…
Mahler’s Fifth is the perfect soundtrack to a tooth extraction
Frantic chewing of sugar-coated nicotine gum had caused my left lower molar to go irretrievably rotten, and the dentist finally…
How Claudio Abbado bridged old and new
Not long ago the great conductors of classical music were general practitioners. They expected to give satisfactory interpretations of music…
Goodbye, Claudio Abbado. You helped us glimpse eternity
Fellini’s credo ‘the visionary is the only true realist’ could also be applied to the life of Claudio Abbado, who…
A world-class orchestra in the heart of São Paulo’s Crackland
São Paulo has a concert hall that London’s orchestras would kill for. It was originally a railway station, a mighty…