| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 1-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Ideas, ideals, and influences: A Child of Our Time at The Rest is Noise with the LPO and Wigglesworth |
 Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival has a number of strands of thought permeating its concerts. It explores the effects of war, sex and sexuality, politics, and race on some of the 20th century’s most important musical output. The underlying argument behind putting on this extraordinary series of events is that the music, much of which we know and love, cannot be understood properly without understanding the context in which it was written.
Read full review... | |
| 26-Apr-2013 Philharmonie: Großer Saal | Hope in adversity: The Berlin Philharmonic and Radio Choir perform Tippett and Dean |
 Programming is a delicate art, and one which is difficult to get right. However, it is one of Simon Rattle’s fortes, and this was clearly evident in Friday night’s concert. Both works on the programme, Brett Dean’s The Last Days of Socrates and Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time are large-scale oratorios dealing with difficult subject matter, and it is highly unusual to pair such works. But they both share one overarching theme: hope in the face of adversity. Though full of despair and sorrow, it is hope that draws both works to a close.Read full review... | |
| 19-Apr-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Powerful Tippett, Beethoven and Mark Simpson with the BBC SO at the Barbican |
 Elisabeth Blanchett.jpg) On the day after the announcement of the programme for this year’s BBC Proms, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave us yet another concert worthy of that great festival. Under the experienced baton of Martyn Brabbins they took three centuries of music in their stride and at the end of the concert I was left feeling that musical life in London would be so much less exciting without the BBC.
Read full review... | |
| 12-Apr-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis play Jonathan Lloyd, Brahms and Tippett |
 Friday night’s BBC SO concert certainly drew in a large crowd, despite the presence of two unfamiliar works: a new one by Jonathan Lloyd and Tippett’s Fourth Symphony from 1977. The addition of the ever-popular pianist Stephen Hough to the lineup, playing the one of the most challenging concertos in the repertoire, Brahms’ First, must have helped the numbers.
Read full review... | |
