The Classical Source publishes its reviews of #classical concerts, #opera #ballet #musicals #recordings & #interviews. Tweets by the Classicalsource team
Informal concourse performance ends a week of concerts with Royal Northern Sinfonia across the North.
'You cannot judge someone merely from a recording,' I remember Lazar Berman saying over a Soho lunch fifty years ago. 'Horowitz made me a good allegory. If
The collaboration between Igor Stravinsky and Ernest Ansermet is one of the most significant in 20th-century music, akin to that between Shostakovich and
Stokowski was among a small group of conductors who were enthusiastically drawn to Russian music, particularly the new school of 20th-century composers,
This is New Sussex Opera’s first foray into the French Baroque and, despite a work which isn’t the most accessible from that repertoire, the company brings it
An optimistic call to arms, Grażyna Bacewicz’s 1943 Overture – her first orchestral work in an output including four symphonies and seven violin concertos –
The world of opera has produced some bizarre, well-nigh incomprehensible plots, but few rival Mr Broucek (in Czech a small beetle). Composed between 1908-18
With no overture to open the evening, we began straight away with an eloquent reading of an evergreen. Kian Soltani has already recorded this greatest of all
Andre Cluytens recorded Faust in 1953 and 1958; the latter in stereo. Both shared the three main principals. Cluytens keeps the score moving, although he lets
English National Ballet’s latest mixed bill is a somewhat ho-hum affair, a two-hour triptych comprising an undisputed masterpiece by a master choreographer
A full house greeted this season-opening concert with palpable enthusiasm and, wonder of wonders, a decent hiatus of quiet contemplation before the closing
The great French conductor Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) was something of a wanderer. After starting out as a viola player, he worked with, amongst others, the
The third collection of English String Music from this source is as outstanding as its predecessors, albeit more distanced from the famous Sir John
Like many other modern composers Josemari Hernandez composes accessible, largely tonal, as opposed to confrontational, music.
For several years The Last Night of the Proms has excited controversy, due to what might be considered the overt nationalism of Rule Britannia and Land of
Almost 6,000 promenaders packed the hall for a Last Night doing two jobs at once: seeing off the 2026 season in customary style, and finding room for grief.
A late start and a single work defined this penultimate concert of the season. Unlike the so-called ‘Gershwin’ Rhapsody in Blue advertised at a previous Prom,
This was a modest, even self-effacing event with which to celebrate the orchestra’s 90th birthday but room had to be found for the pop proffered later in the
It’s 50 years since (now Sir) Simon Rattle first conducted at the Proms (though his first Royal Albert Hall appearance was a year later, in 1977). He has
Unlike today, back in the 1960s the world was awash with great conductors. Several of whom led great orchestras, moulded in their image. Of these, none were