News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
Heart-wrenching, joy-inducing and irrepressibly thrilling: our classical critics’ highlights of the year | Classical music | The Guardian
Welsh National Opera hit the heights with Britten – only to be brought low by funding cuts, Barenboim returned to the Proms and Edinburgh’s Usher Hall radiated with sheer ferocious energy in a spectacular year of live music
LSO/Pappano review – postwar Vaughan Williams at his most ferocious and compelling | London Symphony Orchestra | The Guardian
Antonio Pappano delivered a masterclass in dynamic control with VW’s final symphony, leaving the perennially popular Elgar cello concerto that followed feeling almost toothless
Concerto Italiano/Alessandrini review – purity and expressiveness as natural as breathing | Classical music | The Guardian
<strong>Queen Elizabeth Hall, London<br></strong>Rinaldo Alessandrini and his six superlative vocalists celebrated their 40th anniversary with a return to Monteverdi – the composer with whom they first established their reputation
The Pirates of Penzance review – not modern nor general but major fun in revival of Mike Leigh’s trad staging | Opera | The Guardian
Gilbert & Sullivan stalwarts Richard Suart and John Savourin ensure that English National Opera’s staging buckles your swashes; and, as apprentice pirate Frederic, William Morgan is genuinely funny
‘How do you sound like a sickly moon or a gigantic black butterfly?’: Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and its ‘sing-speech’ | Classical music | The Guardian
The song cycle’s exploration of madness, death, sex and trauma redefined music – and singing. But how do you hiss, whisper and sing at the same time?
LSO/Volkov review – Lachenmann’s My Melodies offers eerie mutterings, brutal force and unpitched sounds | Classical music | The Guardian
The work is immensely taxing for orchestra and audience alike but was performed with precision and virtuosity, while, in the second half, a lean and lithe Beethoven’s Seventh made for a gracious companion piece
BCMG/Paterson review – amplification dulls both Eötvös and Birtwistle | Classical music | The Guardian
The late Peter Eötvös’s slender and nuanced Secret Kiss didn’t hold the attention; works by Julian Anderson, Lisa Illean and Rebecca Saunders fared better in this Birmingham Contemporary Music Group concert