| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 1-Sep-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 67: Gewandhaus' all-Mendelssohn evening produces mixed results |
 The first of the two Proms by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra featured an all-Mendelssohn programme. The orchestra has a long tradition of performing Mendelssohn’s music, as he was their Music Director from 1835 until his early death in 1847. The current Music Director Riccardo Chailly, since his appointment in 2005, has been enthusiastic about having a fresh look at this tradition, and has been performing and recording the symphonies and the overtures in their original versions, as well as recording the completed version of the unfinished Third Piano Concerto.
Read full review... | |
| 24-May-2012 Bridgewater Hall | The Hallé and Nikolaj Znaider: Ninth Symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich |
 Nikolaj Znaider concluded the Hallé Beethoven cycle in emphatic fashion, preceding the Choral Symphony with another ninth symphony, that of Shostakovich. The football-style roar from the sell-out audience at the end of the evening was a good indicator of the quality of the concert.
Read full review... | |
| 8-May-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | The Agony and the Ecstasy: LSO Performs Bartók and Szymanowski |
 Every now and then I like to experiment. Reviewing a concert in which I know none of the music can be frightening, but also exciting and – always – surprising. Thus I was slightly apprehensive but wholly enthusiastic about attending this LSO concert featuring works unknown to me by Bartók and Szymanowski. And after all, this music is not immediate, with show-stopping, crowd-pulling, radio-playing-in-the-background “listenability”.Read full review... | |
| 9-Feb-2012 Bridgewater Hall | The Hallé and Sir Mark Elder: Beethoven 7 |
 Mark Elder finished his part in the Hallé’s Beethoven cycle with a rambunctious performance of the seventh symphony, with works by Sibelius and Bartók adding to a dynamic evening of music.
Before conducting Sibelius’ tone poem The Bard, Elder paid tribute to the late Paavo Berglund, the great Finnish conductor and champion of all things Sibelian, who died last month.Read full review... | |
