Category: Review
-
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.
-
Review – Turangalîla 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.
-
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.
-
Keeping Thoroughly Good, Thoroughly Good
No patron. No institution. Just keeping the lights on with a Ko-Fi tip.
-
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.
-
Review – Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival
How do we react when connection breaks down and our world disintegrates? We likely respond as though the world isn’t watching us.
-
Review – Feldman & Beckett’s Words & Music at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival have made a bold choice this year in programming works by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated how well they know their audience too.
-
Review – United Strings of Europe: Purcell Room, 9 May 2026
Guest reviewer Caroline Potter on United Strings of Europe’s Purcell Room debut — a programme exploring music, deafness, and what it means to listen.
-
Review – Carice Singers at Kings Place: Steve Martland reconsidered
A Kings Place concert series dedicated to Steve Martland is challenging assumptions created by the aesthetic his promotion leaned on when the composer was alive.
-
Review – Papillons at Southbank’s Multitudes
Papillons at Multitudes was multimedia production that mirrored the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies across three miniatures which over the course of 70 minutes saw a sonic metamorphosis of cellist Laura van der Heijden’s playing from amplified strings to electronic distortion. It kind of worked.