Wigmore Hall
Bruckner on Ozempic – and the première of the year
Bruckner at the Wigmore Hall. Yes, you heard right: a Bruckner symphony – his second: usually performed by 80-odd musicians…
Why we’re flocking to matinees
The Starland Vocal Band were on to something. In their 1976 hit ‘Afternoon Delight’ they sang, in gruesomely twee harmony:…
The stupidity of the classical piano trio
It’s a right mess, the classical piano trio; the unintended consequence of one of musical history’s more frustrating twists. When…
Why is Fauré not more celebrated?
It is 100 years since the death of Gabriel Fauré, a composer whose spellbinding romantic tunes emerge from harmonies and…
A lively and imaginative interpretation of an indestructible Britten opera
Scottish Opera’s new production of Albert Herring updates the action to 1990, and hey – remember 1990? No, not particularly,…
The miracle of watching a great string quartet perform
Joseph Haydn, it’s generally agreed, invented the string quartet. And having done so, he re-invented it: again and again. Take…
Colour in the gloom
Music and politics don’t mix, runs the platitude. Looks a bit tattered now, doesn’t it? For Soviet musicians, of course,…
Away with the fairies
Scottish Opera’s new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to open in midwinter. Snow falls, fairies hurl snowballs…
Satisfaction guaranteed
‘Drammatico’, wrote César Franck over the opening of his Piano Quintet, and you’d better believe he meant it. The score…
Carry on Bel Canto
Melons. An absolutely cracking pair of melons, right there on a platter: the centrepiece of the banquet that the chaste,…
Live and let die
Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…
Follow the lieder
‘Popular’ classical music is a relative term. Show me someone who thinks Beethoven is surefire box office, and I’ll show……
Warmth, energy and gripping momentum: Stephen Hough’s Wigmore Hall residency reviewed
In the summer of 1878 Johannes Brahms finally succeeded in growing a beard. It was his third attempt. ‘Prepare your…
A.N. Wilson: The V&A’s Tristram Hunt is a modern Prince Albert
We don’t have Thanksgiving in Britain, but this does not stop us giving thanks and Christmas is a good time…
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre…
A sonic masterclass: the Silesian String Quartet at Wigmore Hall reviewed
Of all the daft notions about the classical music business, the daftest is that it’s a business at all. Seriously:…
Testosterone and passion: Royal Opera’s Marriage of Figaro reviewed
Another turn around the block for David McVicar’s handsome 1830s Figaro at the Royal Opera — the sixth since the…
Igor Levit’s Goldbergs were transcendental
Igor Levit has rapidly achieved cult status, as he certainly deserves. He has already reached the stage where he can…
The forgotten masterpieces of Amy Beach
At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once…
Cringingly vulgar, brainless and lacking heart: ENO’s Merry Widow reviewed
Garrick Ohlsson is one of the finest pianists of his generation. Why, then, was the Wigmore Hall not much more…
A Winterreise that included a mistake of genius
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of approach to performing Schubert’s Winterreise, though sometimes there’s doubt or dispute about which…
Read The Spectator article that gave birth to musical minimalism 50 years ago
The Spectator is responsible for many coinages. One of the most significant came in 1968, when an article by our…
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…
Second coming
Earlier this month the Wigmore Hall was sold out for a Schubert recital by a concert pianist whose only solo…
