Category: Review
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Review – Sphinx Piano Quintet at Aldeburgh Festival 2026
Spirit in the Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson, and a communal moment of meditation in the Cassie Kinoshi
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Review – Pelleas et Melisande at Aldeburgh Festival 2026
Debussy’s score constructs an intense interior world and plants ideas in the mind of the listener. Rory Kinnear’s direction strips away distraction. Those ideas grow during and after performance.
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Mrs T in Preview at King’s Place
Opera helps us take some of the political heat out of it” — Dominic Sandbrook, reflecting on his first libretto, accidentally hands the audience the challenge with Mrs T.
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Review – Manchester Camerata with ‘8 Songs For A Mad King’
Mental disintegration demands energy which this event didn’t always have. But when it counted – as in Peter Maxwell-Davies 8 Songs For A Mad King – the effect was brutal, and the questions potent.
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Review – Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu at Bergen International Festival 2026
Together, Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu slow down time. Everyone holds their breath.
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Review – Alexander Gadjiev at Troldhaugen, Bergen International Festival
A compelling Grieg playlist prepares the ground for Ravel and Messiaen. Mussorgsky’s Pictures needed a bigger room.
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Review – TurangalĂ®la Symphony at Bergen International Festival with Esa-Pekka Salonen
a rare glimpse at the cosmos at the moment of creation, destruction, or maybe its 21st birthday.
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Review – Peter Grimes (Royal Opera House, 2026)
Rarely has a production left me quite so unsettled — its already bleak ending is made more so when it’s set in the present day.
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Keeping Thoroughly Good, Thoroughly Good
No patron. No institution. Just keeping the lights on with a Ko-Fi tip.
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Review – Britten Sinfonia: Britten in America at Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2026
A concert, an anniversary, a building. This was Norwich quietly reasserting its place in the composer’s story.