Renaud Capuçon shows us the future in Aix, plus the best of April’s classical concerts
Renaud Capuçon/Martha Argerich, Aix Easter Festival ★★★★☆ There’s been no shortage of big names at this year’s Aix Easter Festival: Barbara Hannigan, Maria João Pires, Yuja Wang, Juan…
Sibyl, Barbican review: William Kentridge blows up the future, in spectacular style
Continuously original, deeply humane, and vividly thought-provoking, the South African William Kentridge is one of the great artists of our time. Alongside his extensive visual work, Kentridge…
Argerich and Capuçon make a fascinating mix at Aix, plus the best of April’s classical concerts
Renaud Capuçon/Martha Argerich, Aix Easter Festival ★★★★☆ There’s been no shortage of big names at this year’s Aix Easter Festival: Barbara Hannigan, Maria João Pires, Yuja Wang, Juan…
Is there anything Zadie Smith can’t do?
What other surprises is Zadie Smith keeping back? In this evening of words and music, she became the latest in a conga line of authors to be…
Technical brilliance and beguiling artistry from Yuja Wang at Aix, plus the best of April’s classical concerts
Ivan HewettAix-en-Provence hardly needs a festival to be lovely in spring. The peonies and fruit trees are in bloom, you can smell the rosemary, and the Provencal…
Operatic star power opens the Aix Easter Festival, plus the best of April’s classical concerts
Passiontide at Merton, Merton College Oxford Chapel ★★★★☆ Merton College’s annual three-day celebration of Easter music, which mingles sung church services with straight concerts of sacred music…
Heavenly music-making at Merton College’s Passiontide festival
Passiontide at Merton, Merton College Oxford Chapel ★★★★☆ Merton College’s annual four-day celebration of Easter music, which mingles sung church services with straight concerts of sacred music…
Here’s the best way to enjoy Vaughan Williams
Since I wrote in January about Ralph Vaughan Williams’s impending 150th birthday in October, there has been a tidal wave of activity to celebrate him. His music…
Soprano Danielle de Niese: if sex is present in the music, I can’t ignore it
“Even when I made my Met debut when I was 19,” she explains, “there was an understanding that there was a tendency towards roles that require acting…
Le Bal de Paris, Barbican, review: glad rags, zebra heads and a virtual reality extravaganza
A woman with the head of a zebra, wearing a sophisticated little black dress, extends her hands in invitation. Together, we step from side to side as…
A strange hodge-podge of an evening at the Southbank, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
A performance of one of Bach’s Passions, his dramatic retellings of the Arrest, Trial and Crucifixion of Christ, is not something you stroll along to in a…
Two superstar singers get Romantic at the Barbican, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
A performance of one of Bach’s Passions, his dramatic retellings of the Arrest, Trial and Crucifixion of Christ, is not something you stroll along to in a…
A heavenly retelling of Bach’s St John Passion, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
Bach St John Passion, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, South Bank ★★★★☆ A performance of one of Bach’s Passions, his dramatic retellings of the Arrest, Trial…
Defiant bravery and first-rate conducting from Vasily Petrenko, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
After Dark began at sunset and ended with a sunrise – and because this festival, organised by BBC Radio 3, fell on the Spring Equinox, that period…
The After Dark festival marks the Spring Equinox in style, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
After Dark, Sage Gateshead ★★★★☆ After Dark began at sunset and ended with a sunrise – and because this festival, organised by BBC Radio 3, fell on…
The Emerson Quartet show the power of music in times of conflict, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
“The show must go on” may be a fine principle, but it can be hard to act on, as the Covid-related cancellation of numerous shows in recent…
A Czech classic that spoke passionately for Ukraine, plus the best of March’s classical concerts
“The show must go on” may be a fine principle, but it can be hard to act on, as the Covid-related cancellation of numerous shows in recent…
Dogs of Europe, Barbican, review: an unnerving drama that foresaw the war in Ukraine
Does Dogs of Europe rank as the most topical theatre production of modern times? The now exiled Belarus Free Theatre – long-established dissidents under, and de facto…
The Barbican at 40: the brutalist nightmare we’ve come to love
There were tensions, however, between the pressures for a major residential development and the provision of commercial office buildings that would earn income. The battle was hard-fought…
The Barbican at 40: the brutalist nightmare we’ve come to love
There were tensions, however, between the pressures for a major residential development and the provision of commercial office buildings that would earn income. The battle was hard-fought…
This all-Russian concert proved better in theory than in practice
“The show must go on” may be a fine principle, but it can be hard to act on, as the Covid-related cancellation of numerous shows in recent…
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945-1965, review: aren’t we all feeling quite glum enough already?
And we thought we had it tough, first slogging through a pandemic, and now with the war in Ukraine. Postwar Modern, a new exhibition at the Barbican,…
András Schiff and friends ‘scrape together’ some Haydn (brilliantly)
Haydn Festival, Wigmore Hall ★★★★☆ “The show must go on” may be a fine principle, but it can be hard to act on, as the Covid-related cancellation…
Barbara Hannigan turns La voix humaine, a timeless opera, into a narcissistic gimmick
Opera plots are seldom more straightforwardly non-existent than that of Francis Poulenc’s 1959 one-woman show La voix humaine, a compact 40-minute work evoking the agonised last phone-call…
Alexandre Kantorow, poet of the piano, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City Halls, Glasgow ★★★★☆ This concert of Carl Nielsen’s pivotal Symphony No 3 (his “Sinfonia espansiva”) marks the beginning of the BBC Scottish…