| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 19-May-2013 Kings Place: Hall Two | Bruce Brubaker plays Alvin Curran at Kings Place |
 (1).jpg) Sixteen minutes of mercilessly pummelling the piano keys, alternating shimmering, dissonant chords between right and left hands, as fast as humanly possible or maybe slightly faster. This fleet, beguiling whoosh of texture left the Kings Place audience in no doubt as to Bruce Brubaker’s technical prowess, nor his astonishingly delicate, sensitive touch at the keyboard. If we’d been after proof of his commitment to championing interesting new music, at whatever personal cost – well, he had that covered too.
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| 15-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Purcell Room | Chess, leaves and eagles: New works at the Purcell Room |
 This Richard Thomas Foundation concert at Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room introduced us to two completely new works, and presented two slightly older pieces too for good measure. All were beautifully played by a top selection of performers, making for an excellent demonstration of the power of new music.
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| 10-May-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Not an outrageous start to Nico Muhly's A Scream and an Outrage weekend at the Barbican |
 Nico Muhly describes A Scream and an Outrage, the weekend of events he curated at the Barbican this weekend, as like a dinner party, “a gathering of friends and family new and old; loosely organised”. A wonderfully relaxed vibe was even present on entering the hall for the first concert on Friday: Muhly and a few pals were sat at the side of the stage, quietly and tastefully improvising around a drone. The sense of conviviality which ran throughout the evening was an unusual and welcome thing for a (basically) classical concert. The music, on the other hand, was very uneven.
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| 6-May-2013 Wigmore Hall | Eight extraordinary string players meet: The Arditti and JACK Quartets combine at Wigmore Hall |
 The volume was that of a string quartet on steroids, but the sound was that of eight extraordinary string players each playing slightly different things. James Clarke’s 2012-S, for two string quartets, gave an explosive, subtle start to the Arditti and JACK Quartets’ joint Wigmore Hall recital this Monday. Combining extremes of volume with minute nuances of pitch and expression, 2012-S was a perfect showcase for these two virtuosic quartets, and a whirlwind listen in its own right as well.Read full review... | |
| 25-Apr-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Sir John Eliot Gardiner at 70 with the LSO and Stravinsky |
 There’s something quite strongly “neoclassical” about the whole historically-informed performance movement. Someone like Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has championed the use of detailed historical knowledge of performance practice and instruments, has never actually been attempting to transport us all back to the 18th century. That would be futile, obviously. Part of the aim has surely always been to let us hear the past with fresh ears, to give new context to music otherwise familiar – to make something new from something very old.Read full review... | |
| 21-Apr-2013 Kings Place: Hall Two | International Contemporary Ensemble at Kings Place |
 International Contemporary Ensemble’s debut London concert was a small-scale affair, tucked away in Hall 2 of Kings Place on a Sunday afternoon. But this talented group still gave us a great taste of why they’re such big news in the United States, with a pleasantly varied programme of new and recent music curated for them by Londoner and long-time collaborator Dai Fujikura.
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| 12-Apr-2013 Barbican Theatre | Première of Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden at the Barbican |
 What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “3D occult mystery film opera”? Because I’ll bet that whatever this makes you imagine is nothing like the reality of composer/director Michel van der Aa and librettist David Mitchell’s Sunken Garden, which debuted at the Barbican last night. That is, if “reality” is really an appropriate word for this work, which frequently pushes the term to its limits.
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| 9-Apr-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Brahms meets Schoenberg: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in London for The Rest is Noise |
 Tonight’s The Rest is Noise concert, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas and Yefim Bronfman, took on one of 20th-century music’s biggest questions. Anyone who has been following this huge concert series – or indeed the accompanying BBC documentary The Sound and the Fury – will no doubt be acquainted by now with Arnold Schoenberg and his angry, radical ways.Read full review... | |
| 6-Apr-2013 Wigmore Hall | BCMG's Into the Little Hill on George Benjamin Day at Wigmore Hall |
 “All music – smiles the minister – is incidental.” So says one of the two singers in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Into the Little Hill, performed to perfection in Wigmore Hall by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group this Saturday. Anyone familiar with the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin will not be surprised to learn that the mysterious stranger whom the minister is addressing begs to differ. So, I am sure, would anybody listening to this mesmerising chamber opera itself.
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| 30-Mar-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Gergiev and the LSO in Brahms and Szymanowski choral works |
 I don’t think Valery Gergiev has ever been out to claim that Brahms and Szymanowski were particularly similar composers. I certainly hope he hasn’t, at any rate, on the basis of his final LSO programme pairing the two of them. But that’s not to say they don’t make an intriguing match, and this meeting of the Pole’s Stabat Mater (1925–26) and the German’s Requiem (1865–68) was provocative and worthwhile.
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| 28-Mar-2013 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre | Kurtág's Kafka Fragments staged at the Linbury Studio Theatre |
| “The moonlit night dazzled us. Birds shrieked in the trees. There was a rush of wind in the fields. We crawled through the dust, a pair of snakes.”
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| 19-Mar-2013 Wigmore Hall | David Matthews' 70th birthday celebration with the Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall |
 Benjamin Britten isn’t the only British composer with an anniversary this year, and I’m not talking about the 450-year-old John Dowland. David Matthews is 70, and a birthday concert from the Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall last Tuesday presented several of his works in tribute. Despite the absence of scheduled soprano Claire Booth, this was an evening filled with the high-quality music-making that should be expected from the Nash Ensemble, as well as some beautiful compositions.
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| 16-Mar-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | The Gospel according to Peter Sellars: The LA Phil bring a European première to the Barbican |
 Have you heard the good news? The Los Angeles Philharmonic have recently formed a partnership with the Barbican, and they were strutting their impressive stuff in London last week for their first International Associate Residency. Also: Christ died for our sins and was reborn.
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| 14-Mar-2013 Barbican Centre: Art Gallery | Wandering around Cage: Margaret Leng Tan plays Four Walls in the Barbican Art Gallery |
 While you wouldn’t have guessed from her performance, Margaret Leng Tan did not look happy before she played John Cage’s Four Walls in the Barbican Centre’s Art Gallery this Thursday. The placement of the grand piano within the gallery’s exhibition The Bride and the Bachelors, nestled amongst visual artworks by Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, did well on aesthetics but gained nul points acoustically, with the lid positioned such as to point the sound straight into a massive granite pillar.Read full review... | |
| 9-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | Donizetti re-done: The Siege of Calais with English Touring Opera in Hackney |
 A very concise, two-act opera which tells a bleak wartime tale of sacrifice, rarely performed and never realised to the satisfaction of its own composer. You could be forgiven for thinking I was describing something from 20th-century Germany, perhaps an expressionist work taking after Berg’s Wozzeck or similar. You’d be wrong. It’s by Donizetti, and English Touring Opera are currently presenting this opera’s first ever professional British production, having started their tour this weekend at Hackney Empire.
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| 3-Mar-2013 Southbank Centre: Purcell Room | Serially fascinating: Karim Said plays Schoenberg at The Rest is Noise |
 An International Piano Series event, Karim Said’s recital this Sunday was also part of the Southbank Centre’s Berlin in the ’20s and ’30s weekend, a mini-series within the larger series (super-series, perhaps) which is the year-long Rest is Noise festival. He presented a short series of works by Arnold Schoenberg and his composition students Anton von Webern and Hanns Eisler. It was the second of a series of three recitals by Said focusing on Schoenberg.
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| 27-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Baltic music and Bach: Alina Ibragimova and Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican |
 Alina Ibragimova barely glanced up from her score during her Bach concerto with Britten Sinfonia last night, and the result was some of the most intense, beautiful music-making I can recall hearing. With just six members of the orchestra providing her with impeccable support, this was a performance of a sort of off-the-cuff brilliance in which Ibragimova sounded like she was simply playing a favourite piece of hers in private. Every touch, every shift of style or mood, seemed spontaneous, born of an impulsive, powerful love.Read full review... | |
| 20-Feb-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Bach stays wrapped up: The Art of Fugue with Fretwork |
 Bach’s final work The Art of Fugue, left incomplete at his death in 1750, has long been famous for (among other things) not having specified its instrumentation. It’s written in open score – each line of music, or “voice”, is given a distinct printed line, making it hard to guess what instrument Bach actually had in mind to play it. The work’s exceptionally complex counterpoint led many musicologists to assume, in fact, that it was primarily intended as a sort of study guide rather than something to be performed.
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| 12-Feb-2013 St John's Fulham | Wagner done proud in Fulham: Siegfried from Fulham Opera |
| You have to sit in a small Fulham church, on a pretty uncomfortable chair, for at least four hours. And listen to a load of opera singers warbling about dwarves and gold and stuff. From certain perspectives, Fulham Opera’s production of Wagner’s Siegfried doesn’t sound like much fun at all. But somehow – and I’m still not entirely sure why – it’s a completely brilliant evening’s entertainment, which absolutely does Wagner proud.
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| 7-Feb-2013 Riverside Studios | The Magic Flute gets metatheatrical with the Merry Opera Company |
 Mozart’s original The Magic Flute is bizarre enough. The story of a prince and a bird-catcher’s journey to save a princess they’ve never met from a sinister quasi-Freemason who turns out to be alright, it is sufficiently packed full of great songs and good humour to have become an enduring repertory favourite – but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. It doesn’t, really. It is a daft opera.
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| 5-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Turnage, Harding and Hardenberger with the London Symphony Orchestra |
 Tuesday evening’s concert was technically the start of a short residency for Mark-Anthony Turnage with the London Symphony Orchestra, but a smouldering performance on the podium from Daniel Harding came close to drawing attention away from the featured composer. A curious mixture of Sibelius, Turnage and Beethoven – a combination of composers repeated in Thursday’s concert – served primarily to demonstrate Harding’s versatility in conducting, as well as the strength of his relationship with the LSO.
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| 25-Jan-2013 Kulturhuset i Tromsø | Witch-burning in Norway: The Witch Hammer at the Northern Lights Festival |
 Fear of outsiders, the corruption of the state, violence – familiar literary themes, but ones which retain the capacity to thrill, especially with the addition of both local history and witches. This is the world of Heksehammeren (“The Witch Hammer”), a new north-Norwegian opera by composer Ragnar Rasmussen and librettist Ragnar Olsen, which opened the Northern Lights Festival in the city of Tromsø on Friday night.
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| 20-Jan-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Music worth fighting over: Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony at The Rest is Noise |
 You are sitting in the choir stalls of the Royal Festival Hall, watching the ceramic artist and writer Edmund de Waal address you, his back to an enormous sea of empty, grey, imposing seats. He is delivering a vivid narrative account of a day in the life of a young aristocratic Jewish boy in early 20th-century Vienna. He puts you, his audience, in the protagonist’s shoes, referring to this character as “you”. Quite taken with this technique, you later decide to write your review of the event in the same style.
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| 17-Jan-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Living music: John Adams with the London Symphony Orchestra |
 January 2013 is turning out to be a pretty major month for 20th-and 21st-century classical music in London’s cultural mainstream, with Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur roaring loudly at the Royal Opera House and the Southbank Centre’s The Rest Is Noise series, a year-long celebration of 20th-century music, launching currently. But the London Symphony Orchestra showed on Thursday night that it is perfectly possible to tell eloquent, provocative stories about the 20th century through classical music with nothing more than a single, conventional orchestral programme.
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| 9-Jan-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Sir Harrison Birtwistle at Kings Place |
 “Affection is an impossibility”, says Harrison Birtwistle, describing how he feels towards his own compositions. After a Kings Place concert devoted entirely to his works last Wednesday, he talks to Tom Service about his music. He goes so far as to suggest that there isn’t a bar of music he’s ever written that he doesn’t want to change – but unlike certain other composers (that perpetual tinkerer Pierre Boulez springs to mind), he never does.
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| 14-Dec-2012 St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch | A puppet little match girl passion at Spitalfields Winter Festival |
 December in London doesn’t just mean wall-to-wall carol singing and the Messiah. It also means Spitalfields Music Winter Festival, which can be relied upon to programme something novel for the festive season while still not skimping on the mince pies. Friday night saw the innovative vocal ensemble I Fagiolini perform a remarkably diverse selection of pieces ranging from one by the late Renaissance composer Michael Praetorius, via Bach’s motet Jesu, meine Freude, to David Lang’s the little match girl passion (2007).Read full review... | |
| 2-Dec-2012 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | New music galore from the London Sinfonietta at the Southbank Centre |
 Anyone who worries for the health of contemporary composition obviously wasn’t at the Southbank Centre this Sunday, where the London Sinfonietta presented a whole afternoon and evening’s worth of new music in and around the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Their New Music Show 3 comprised four shortish concerts, a series of miniature recitals strategically placed around the hall’s backstage area, two discussion sessions with composers, and stacks of innovative, interesting, new music.Read full review... | |
| 28-Nov-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | From Beethoven to Beethoven: Jurowski and the LPO play Beethoven, Schoenberg and Nono |
 You can’t accuse Vladimir Jurowski of lacking ambition. This LPO concert of his, featuring artfully sequenced works by Beethoven, Schoenberg and Nono, was dedicated “to all the people in the world who are still suffering injustice”. This may have been biting off more than is easily chewed, but this keenly political concert was a fascinating journey, even if a few doubts remain as to precisely what point was being made.
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| 26-Nov-2012 Kings Place: Hall Two | Inspired by Debussy: The Mercury Quartet presents new work |
 Of the two major composers to have had anniversaries in 2012, maybe it’s ironic that it has been the 150-year-old Claude Debussy, rather than the 100-year-old John Cage, who has largely been celebrated with silence. But despite a fairly mild year of Debussy festivities (in London at least), Kings Place was host to a significant commemorative event on Monday night, with an evening of new works “Inspired by Debussy”, performed by the Mercury Quartet and guests.
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| 20-Nov-2012 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Behzod Abduraimov plays Schubert, Beethoven and Liszt in London |
 Despite an abundance of virtuosic Liszt pieces and such force in the Appassionata that he almost fell off his chair at the end, what was most impressive about Behzod Abduraimov in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Tuesday was the way he handled the softer parts. While his impulsive, coruscating virtuoso playing was that of a brilliant young pianist enjoying himself, the simple, direct tone he brought to the Schubert sonata (and the occasional moment elsewhere) was simply that of a gifted musician.
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| 18-Nov-2012 Trinity Church, Wimbledon | Benedict Cumberbatch joins the Britten Oboe Quartet in Wimbledon |
 How do you get more people interested in classical music? It’s a difficult question, but I’d never have guessed it was difficult enough to give to Sherlock Holmes. But sure enough, last Sunday night saw the crowds flock to an oboe quartet recital in a small Wimbledon church, and while they may mostly have been there to see Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch read some poetry, they also gradually became one of the most genuinely engaged and enthusiastic audiences I’ve ever been a part of at a classical concert.
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| 10-Nov-2012 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Thomas Adès' The Tempest live in HD from the Met |
 It’s pretty luxurious to be able to stumble out of your front door at ten to six, wander five minutes round the corner to your friendly local cinema, be greeted with a glass of sparkling wine, and then watch a high-definition live screening of a top contemporary opera production at the Met.Read full review... | |
| 3-Nov-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | Knussen's Sendak operas at the Barbican |
 While there’s no reason that a children’s opera should be simple or easy, there’s no real need for it to be difficult either. So I was a little confused going into the Barbican’s performance of Oliver Knussen’s brilliant brace of Maurice Sendak adaptations this Saturday, which was surrounded, despite the works’ subject matter, with a slightly unbecoming aura of seriousness.Read full review... | |
| 31-Oct-2012 Wigmore Hall | The Arditti Quartet play new music at the Wigmore Hall |
 As a non-composer, I always find it a little disconcerting when composers completely disagree with me about new music. And when I talk to two composers separately, and they offer matching opinions opposed to my own – as happened last night at the Wigmore Hall – I definitely end up feeling slightly wrong-footed. But on reflection, the experience has only served to remind me why I like new music in the first place: there’s no consensus about it; opinions are being forged now; we can all play a role in deciding what it means and how successful it is.Read full review... | |
| 27-Oct-2012 Barbican Centre: Hall | Looking Forward with Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican |
 Rhydian Peters.jpg) Pleasantly enough, Britten Sinfonia went down a thoroughly unconventional route in celebrating their 20th birthday at the Barbican on Saturday, with a brilliantly varied range of new pieces mixing with chamber orchestra classics. With a stellar range of guests, they carried us along all the way from Purcell to Moondog, encapsulating the spirit of versatility and openness which makes the group what it is.
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| 25-Oct-2012 Royal College of Music: Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall | New compositions at the Royal College of Music |
| New music sounds all the newer when played by new performers, and so the Royal College of Music’s New Perspectives concert was refreshing to say the least, with a programme played by the College’s own ensemble featuring two world premières and two more pretty recent works. This attractively organised recital framed its two brand new works within pieces by those twin leading lights of British music Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies.
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| 18-Oct-2012 Cadogan Hall | Stravinsky and Adams with City of London Sinfonia and Michael Collins |
 Before last night I had reserved judgement on John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music (1982), which I knew from CD but hadn’t previously heard live. It was an effect-piece, I thought, so while it had left me a little cold in recorded form, I was open to the possibility that this enormous, ecstatic major-key pile-up would blow me away in the concert hall. But while City of London Sinfonia’s gleeful rendition in Cadogan Hall last night certainly made an impression, I can’t help but continue to think that the piece is a bit daft.
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| 13-Oct-2012 St Faith's Church | Palestrina meets Stravinsky: FifteenB Consort at the Herne Hill Festival |
 Unless you’re actually performing it liturgically, it’s very difficult to know what to do with sacred music these days. The masses of Palestrina, the motets of Byrd, the cantatas of Bach – all seem to merit our attention today, but not for the religious reasons for which they were originally written. Without its original sacred context, however, a Renaissance mass – to take one example – is an extremely strange thing. Sitting back in rapt silence and listening to it straight through, as one does with a Beethoven symphony, is anachronistic to say the least.Read full review... | |
| 12-Oct-2012 St John's Smith Square | Transparent Glass: The Smith Quartet at St John's Smith Square |
 Bathed in a wash of soft blue light, St John’s Smith Square was home to a remarkable concert on Friday night with the Smith Quartet presenting all five of Philip Glass’ string quartets. The performance, played with the sensitivity of real experts in this repertoire, provided an insightful and absorbing overview to the many different sides of Glass.
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| 24-Sep-2012 Kings Place: Hall Two | Stewart Lee meets John Cage at Kings Place |
 They say you should never meet your heroes. But they don’t say anything about them meeting each other, so I had very little idea of what to expect at Kings Place on Monday night when comedian Stewart Lee performed John Cage. In the event, this was a hugely enjoyable short recital, though I do wonder if it wasn’t a bit funnier than should really be expected from a Cage gig.
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| 14-Sep-2012 Kings Place: Hall Two | Kings Place Festival: Chamber and solo music by Stravinsky and Knussen |
 When Stravinsky brought his radical ballet Petrushka to Vienna in 1912, the composer recounts in his autobiography, the orchestra was full of complaints about the demands of the score. Disillusioned by this, Stravinsky found comfort from the unlikely figure of the man who raised and lowered the stage curtains. “Don’t let’s be downhearted”, he said, “I’ve been here for 55 years... It was just the same with Tristan”.
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| 12-Sep-2012 Sadler's Wells: Peacock Theatre | British Youth Opera 25th anniversary season: A Night at the Chinese Opera |
 and Catherine Backhouse (General Tu-an-Ku).jpg) British Youth Opera have been fostering the best of young British vocal talent for 25 years, and it’s a delight to see them celebrating their anniversary this year with a work precisely as old as they are: Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera dates from 1987, and made for a lively showcase for these rising stars at London’s Peacock Theatre last night.
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| 4-Sep-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 71: Mixed doubles from St Louis Symphony |
 On 3 September 1912, in a Proms concert which also featured a comedy overture by Granville Bantock and excerpts from Délibes’ ballet Coppélia, Henry Wood and his Queen’s Hall Orchestra gave the world première of Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, a landmark work in atonal expressionism which drew hisses from the hall audience.Read full review... | |
| 17-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 47: John Cage night |
 Now they know how many cacti it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Last night’s marathon John Cage Prom finished up, over three hours after it had started, with a wonderfully cactus-heavy performance of Branches (1976). Played by Robyn Schulkowsky and 20 more musicians scattered broadly around the hall, Branches involved copious amplified cactus-plucking as well as plenty more soft sounds thoughtfully extracted from a range of natural, foresty items such as sticks and twigs.Read full review... | |
| 16-Aug-2012 Riverside Studios: Studio 3, Hammersmith | The Francis Bacon Opera at Tête à Tête |
 “I’m an old man, but I’m profoundly optimistic about nothing.”
Francis Bacon said no end of fascinating things, about painting, art, life, everything really. So listening to his thoughts, especially when guided along by an interviewer as expert as Melvyn Bragg, was always going to make for an entertaining evening.Read full review... | |
| 9-Aug-2012 Riverside Studios: Studio 3, Hammersmith | Size Zero Opera at Tête à Tête: The Sandman |
 Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival is an amazing opportunity for emerging opera companies and performers, giving valuable time and attention to bold and strange new works. But few pieces in the festival’s six-year history can have been bolder or stranger – or, quite possibly, better – than Size Zero Opera’s The Sandman, a brilliant and surreal creation which deserves more than the two performances it is receiving here.
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| 6-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 32: Leonard Bernstein's Mass makes its Proms debut |
 Leonard Bernstein’s Mass is massive. And massively odd. I thought I had prepared myself for what was in store before this piece’s Proms debut on Monday, but actually I hadn’t. Maybe there isn’t really anything that can prepare you for the sight of several hundred Welsh singers, many of primary school age, gently boogying to the sounds of an orchestral frenzy, after singing a Latin translation of Psalm 130. And any work which rhymes “praying” with “Kyrie-ing” is always going to raise eyebrows, whether you know what’s going on or not.
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| 30-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 22: Mahler meets Knussen with the BBC Phil and Noseda |
 Oliver Knussen’s music is all about exquisiteness and elegance – not words to describe Mahler’s at the best of times, but maybe his Seventh Symphony least of all, with its odd, lumbering structure, coarse trills and abrupt changes of pace. But Mahler 7 and Knussen 2 made an attractive pairing in the hands of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda on Monday, in this excellent performance of some wide-ranging repertoire.
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| 28-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 19: BBC Symphony Orchestra with Dausgaard and Müller-Schott |
 Black v2.jpg) It’s hard to say who was more excited about Prom 19: Thomas Dausgaard, who conducted the whole thing with lashings of arm-waving vigour, or the Proms audience, who enjoyed the performance so much that they deliberately (and justifiably) clapped between the movements. Perhaps some conflict between two such highly enthused forces was always inevitable – particularly as the concert finished with that notorious clapper’s purgatory, Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, whose rousing penultimate movement always provokes at least some applause.Read full review... | |
| 26-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 17: Boulez's Le marteau sans maître |
 Unlike the rest of of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's Proms thus far, this concert was not a sandwich. It was more of a chocolate cupcake, with a creamy topping of Beethoven and a strong, substantial body made of Boulez. Not one for the dieters, but a wonderful late-night snack before the next day's roast dinner of Beethoven 9.
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