| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 19-May-2013 Chicago Symphony Center | Hamelin, the technician, at Chicago Symphony Center |
 Anyone who knows the name Marc-André Hamelin will know him foremost for his technique. It is, to use a crude expression, what his brand is built upon. He is known to be able to handily dispatch the most taxing pieces in both the modern repertoire and the warhorse cabinet, the latter of which furnished much of his recent program at Symphony Center in Chicago – Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Sonata, for a start. Yet the fact of his technique obscures its place – in fact, its obscuring place – in his musicianship.
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| 17-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Brains and beauty: Barbara Hannigan, Sir Simon Rattle and Philadelphia Orchestra in New York |
 The Philadelphia Orchestra was visibly enjoying their evening at Carnegie Hall with Sir Simon Rattle, their frequent guest conductor who nearly became their music director. In a program of early modern classics and a perennial Beethoven favorite, energy and spirits were high and in good supply.
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| 11-May-2013 The London Coliseum | Bring your mental body armour: Wozzeck at ENO |
 Military service brutalises. If you’re in any doubt about this, Berg’s short opera Wozzeck should dispel them, and particularly so in Carrie Cracknell’s new production for ENO. The fragmentary play on which Wozzeck is based, by Georg Büchner, originated in a true story of a soldier in the Napoleonic wars and was edited and published after the Franco-Prussian war; Berg wrote the opera in the aftermath of World War I; Cracknell moves it to the British military of today. It could be in any place at any time.
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| 27-Apr-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Music from dark times: London Philharmonic Orchestra at The Rest is Noise |
 Tonight’s concert was a prime example of the solid programming of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival. The concert, titled “Music from Dark Times”, included pieces by Webern, Berg, Bartók and Martinů, written between 1934 and 1941, which were indeed dark times for all these composers. In Vladimir Jurowski’s introduction, the conductor explained that this was one the most challenging evenings of the year for him and the orchestra.Read full review... | |
