| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 13-Jan-2013 Sage: Hall Two | Russians in miniature at The Sage Gateshead |
 Like much of Shostakovich’s work, his popular Piano Quintet, Op. 57 (1940) is full of ambiguity and contradiction. It was written at the request of his friends in the Beethoven Quartet, who had so enjoyed his first string quartet that they asked him to write something new that they could play with him – but this private piece of chamber music was a huge public success. The composer who had enraged Stalin just a few years earlier was awarded a huge prize for his quintet, and it was hailed as his best work.Read full review... | |
| 5-Dec-2012 Philharmonic Hall | Mixed Russian music from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Pablo Gonzalez |
 Spaniard Pablo Gonzalez made his second appearance with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in an all-Russian programme of mixed success, pairing a slightly routine Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto with a thrilling account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
Read full review... | |
| 5-Oct-2012 Usher Hall | Peter Oundjian launches his directorship of RSNO with Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich |
.jpg) If the presence of BBC Radio 3 and a huge audience occasioned any nervousness on the evening of Peter Oundjian’s first Edinburgh appearance as RSNO Music Director, it was well hidden. Weaving with boyish enthusiasm through the orchestra, a sporting spring in his step, he acknowledged the warm welcome before the orchestra dived into Glinka’s 1842 overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla.
Read full review... | |
| 2-Oct-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | Elina Garanča thrills in concert at the Barbican |
 As crowd-pulling operatic divas go, most of the attention goes to the sopranos. But a select number of mezzos have the same kind of following, and Latvia's Elina Garanča is high on that list. There are just a few roles where the mezzo is the main character of the opera (many of the others are "witches and bitches", as Garanča puts it), and the big one of those is Carmen.Read full review... | |
