Proms

A euphoric meat-and-two-veg programme: Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/Paavo Jarvi, at the Proms, reviewed

9 September 2023 9:00 am

We used to call it a ‘meat and two veg’ programme, back in my concert planning days: the reliable set…

Imagine a school concert hosted by Bela Lugosi: Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer, at the Proms, reviewed

19 August 2023 9:00 am

‘Audience Choice’ was the promise at the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Sunday matinee Prom, and come on – who could resist…

Why is this genius playing to a half-empty Royal Albert Hall? Benjamin Grosvenor Prom reviewed

22 July 2023 9:00 am

There were times during last Friday’s First Night of the Proms when it felt as if we’d been transported back…

Holds out huge promise for future seasons: If Opera's La Rondine reviewed

10 September 2022 9:00 am

One swallow might not make a summer, but it certainly helps rounds the season off. ‘Perhaps, like the swallow, you…

The joy of Franck’s Symphony in D Minor: BBCSO/Gabel, at the Proms, reviewed

3 September 2022 9:00 am

In the Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, a Broadway hoofer is forced to work at a community college,…

A classic in the making: Glyndebourne's Poulenc double bill reviewed

13 August 2022 9:00 am

One morning in the 20th century, Thérèse wakes up next to her husband and announces that she’s a feminist. Hubby,…

A lockdown masterpiece and the Jessica Rabbit of concertos: contemporary classical roundup

25 September 2021 9:00 am

So it finally happened: I experienced my first vocal setting of the word ‘Covid’. An encounter that was, inevitably, more…

Opera della Luna is a little miracle: Curtain Raisers at Wilton’s Music Hall reviewed

11 September 2021 9:00 am

Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce…

The central performances are tremendous: Glyndebourne's Luisa Miller, reviewed

28 August 2021 9:00 am

Opera buffs enjoy their jargon. We all do it, scattering words like ‘spinto’ and ‘Fach’ like an enthusiastic pizza waiter…

Ecstasy from Birmingham Opera Company: Wagner's RhineGold reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

At the end of Birmingham Opera Company’s RhineGold, as the gods stood ready to enter Valhalla, Donner swung a baseball…

Affectionate and unthreatening, just like usual: Last Night of the Proms reviewed

19 September 2020 9:00 am

The Last Night of the Proms came and went, and it was pretty much as anyone might have predicted, if…

Why orchestras are sounding better than ever under social-distancing

12 September 2020 9:00 am

Our college choirmaster had a trick that he liked to deploy when he sensed that we were phoning it in.…

Our Belarusian blind spot

29 August 2020 9:00 am

I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what…

Andrew Marr: Scotland is slipping away from the Union

29 August 2020 9:00 am

Staying in Britain for the summer has been, in many ways, entirely glorious. We have zigzagged from Shropshire through Derbyshire…

The BBC tradition of trying to remove patriotic songs from Last Night

29 August 2020 9:00 am

About Last Night It was suggested that the BBC might ‘decolonise’ the Last Night of the Proms by removing ‘Rule,…

Swanky, stale and sullen, the summer music festival has had its day

23 May 2020 9:00 am

The summer music festival has had its day, says Norman Lebrecht

The rude, ripe tastelessness of John Eliot Gardiner’s Berlioz is the perfect antidote to Haitink’s Instagram Bruckner

14 September 2019 9:00 am

Conducting is one of those professions — being monarch is perhaps another — where the less you do, the more…

Chorus of approval: the ENO chorus gives it the full Broadway, triple threats to a man, in Benjamin Britten’s Paul Bunyan (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Often baffling but ultimately entertaining: Britten’s Paul Bunyan reviewed

15 September 2018 9:00 am

‘I feel I have learned lots about what not to write for the theatre…’ There’s a prevailing idea that the…

Kirill Petrenko conducting the Berlin Philharmonic at the 2018 Proms. Photo: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

The gentle side of Bruckner

8 September 2018 9:00 am

The lady behind me on Kensington Gore clearly felt that she owed her friend an apology: ‘It’s Bruckner. I don’t…

Jozsefs Lendvai and Lendvay with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Proms. Image: BBC/Chris Christodoulos

The Budapest Festival Orchestra make all other orchestra look routine and oafish

1 September 2018 9:00 am

Looney Tunes was always at its best when soundtracked by a Hungarian gypsy dance. (Watch ‘Pigs in a Polka’ if…

A Beggar’s Opera that beggars belief in Edinburgh

25 August 2018 9:00 am

Robert Carsen’s new updating of The Beggar’s Opera is a coke-snorting, trash-talking, breakdancing, palm-greasing, skirt-hiking, rule-breaking affair — and every…

Before the dawn: Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Dan Godfrey, Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Sir Charles Stanford, seated. Standing: Sir Edward German and Sir Hubert Parry. Bournemouth Centenary Festival, 1910

Music’s Brexit

11 August 2018 9:00 am

It’s October 1895 and the spirit of Music has been absent from Britain for exactly 200 years. Why she fled,…

An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed

21 July 2018 9:00 am

I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…

The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster

21 July 2018 9:00 am

There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…

Bowled over by Bruckner

9 September 2017 9:00 am

The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work,…