Fiona Maddocks
Don Carlo; Gods and Heroes - review
In Verdi's four-and-a-half-hour opera Don Carlo, one moment captures its essence.
Juan Diego Flórez and friends
Barbican; 1901 Arts Club, London Whatever it might be the rest of the year, London was epicentre of the opera world last week. Not every detail was quite spot on. The glittering trio of Joyce DiDonato , Juan Diego Florez and Jonas Kaufmann - a pheno
Shostakovich: Symphony No 7 'Leningrad' - review
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Petrenko (Naxos) Shostakovich wrote the seventh and longest of his 15 symphonies in the summer of 1941, following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, this uneven but mighty work has acquired symbolic stat
Sunken Garden; Nabucco; Mark Padmore & Graham
Barbican; Royal Opera House, London; Holywell Music Room, Oxford Among all the fabulous gizmos on display, a wall which spun round and transformed chaos into order was the most spectacular. Equally stunning was the suspended stage with a flying gallery f
Beethoven: String Quartets Op 18/3, 18/5 & 135 - review
Hagen Quartet (Myrios Classics) The numbering may suggest otherwise but Op 18 No 3 was the first string quartet Beethoven composed. One theory for the change of order is that this D major work was too strange, too full of struggles with a medium the comp
Scottish Opera: The Flying Dutchman; Fretwork - review
A pile-up of swan boats or glut of sword-bearing heroes might have seemed inevitable for Wagner's 200th anniversary. I could not have predicted the problem would be Dutchmen. First came a bold staging by NI Opera in Belfast, followed by a dazzling concert
Nigel Kennedy: Recital - review
(Sony) Dedicated to violinist heroes Yehudi Menuhin and Stephane Grappelli, Nigel Kennedy 's new album - "music I have either grown up with or feel I have grown up with" - mixes classical, hot club, moody jazz and traditional fiddling, from Fats Waller
Bloch, Bridge, Hough: In the Shadow of War - review
A mood of poignant intensity characterises the three works here, played by Steven Isserlis with two different orchestras. The CD's title anticipates his forthcoming series at Wigmore Hall exploring music of the 1930s. Bridge's Oration, Concerto elegiaco f
The Firework-Maker's Daughter; Halle Orchestra/Elder; Cheryomushki - review
Hull Truck theatre; Bridgewater Hall; RNCM, Manchester Some novels read like film scripts. You know it's only a matter of time until Hollywood competes for the rights. Philip Pullman's fairytale The Firework-Maker's Daughter instead has all the stapl