| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 15-May-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Edinburgh Quartet play Haydn, Britten and Tchaikovsky at the Queen's Hall | Alan Coady |
 Inclement weather stalks the Edinburgh Quartet; at least, those concerts which I’ve attended in the past few months. On cue the early evening heavens opened unstintingly. By the time the concert approached it had “faired”, as the Scots sometimes say, but perhaps disinclination to venture out had been irreversibly embraced by some. That’s not to say that the attendance was poor. The central stalls were pretty full; less so the posture-punishing pews which frame the Queen’s Hall’s wooden horseshoe.Read full review... | ||
| 15-May-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | CBSO's all-American programme a triumph at Symphony Hall, Birmingham | Peter Marks |
 The reason for this all-American programme was ostensibly pragmatic: the concert was to coincide with the opening night of the British-American Business Council annual conference. In practice, the programme was a triumph. Significantly, dozens of schoolchildren were present to witness an evening of fine and involving music-making.
Read full review... | ||
| 14-May-2013 Sadler's Wells | Northern Ballet's The Great Gatsby at Sadler's Wells | Hanna Weibye |
 Goodness, Northern Ballet are an appealing company. Their dancers are cheerful, charismatic and talented; their ethos one of hard work and unflagging dedication to outreach, bringing the delights of ballet to as wide an audience as possible across their mostly northern catchment area. A new full-length story ballet based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, choreographed by David Nixon, is the perfect project for this energetic, enthusiastic ensemble – the characters are strong, the locations distinctive, the atmosphere unforgettable.Read full review... | ||
| 14-May-2013 St George's Bristol | An evening to remember at St George's Bristol: Philip Glass at the piano | Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres |
 From the moment I found out that Philip Glass was going to be playing at St George’s Bristol for his only completely solo performance in Britain this year, I knew it was bound to be a special event. I arrived at the venue to see people waiting patiently and hoping for returns at the box office – the hall was packed to maximum capacity with extra seating at the back. The stage setting was simple, and consisted of purple uplighting, a grand piano, a stool and a microphone. This more casual concert setting allowed for a more genuine approach to listening to Glass’ music.
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| 13-May-2013 St Andrew's Hall | Britten and Bridge with the Philharmonia in Norwich | Nathan Waring |
 The fourteen-year-old Benjamin Britten was already a prolific young composer, albeit without any formal training, when he heard Frank Bridge’s The Sea at the 1927 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival. Hearing this performance and also meeting Bridge (who later became his composition teacher) were seminal events in the youngster’s life. In a letter written in 1963, Britten described himself as being “knocked sideways” by the effect of Bridge’s expressive tone-poem and was thrilled when Bridge agreed to look through his juvenile scribblings.
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| 12-May-2013 St George's Bristol | Five for the price of four: Lawrence Power joins the Takács Quartet for Brahms at St George's Bristol | David Fay |
 Johannes Brahms and his music have a reputation for being somewhat meaty, and so an English Sunday afternoon seems an appropriate time to hear two of his chamber works side by side. Served up by the Takács Quartet joined by violist Lawrence Power, this concert provided the St George’s Bristol audience with plenty to get their teeth into; Sunday roasts were not the only things being digested, as these world-renowned players performed Brahms’ two String Quintets, Opp. 88 and 111.
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| 12-May-2013 New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall | A truly great Gatsby: John Harbison's opera gets a thrilling performance in Boston | Roger Mortimer-Smith |
 Between Baz Luhrmann’s recent film The Great Gatsby, Northern Ballet’s The Great Gatsby currently at Sadler’s Wells, and Elevator Repair Service’s circulation-testing, eight-hour Gatz at the Noël Coward Theatre last year, Londoners such as myself could be forgiven for feeling all Gatsbied out (in truth, Gatz could probably have achieved that by itself).Read full review... | ||
| 11-May-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | The Tokyo String Quartet in musical farewells of Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók at 92Y | Evan Mitchell |
 The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók. The Tokyo Quartet’s personnel has changed since its inception in 1969 – its current members are violinists Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura, and cellist Clive Greensmith – and the group has existed in its current form since 2002.
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| 11-May-2013 The London Coliseum | Bring your mental body armour: Wozzeck at ENO | David Karlin |
 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.
Read full review... | ||
| 11-May-2013 LSO St Lukes | A Scream and an Outrage: Session Two at LSO St Luke's | Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade |
 The title for this Barbican event certainly threw up some interesting questions. Having failed to attend a riotous dinner party that was characterised by one attendee as “a scream and an outrage”, Nico Muhly set about curating a series of concerts under this title. However, no screams or outrages occurred this weekend. Instead the audience was greeted by the sandal-clad, ponytailed oracles of the New York’s fashionable downtown music scene, whose contributions were gently mesmeric rather than abrasive.
Read full review... | ||
| 10-May-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Expertly crafted Beethoven by Ashkenzy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra | Oliver Brett |
 There are only a handful of composers whose music can provide enough variety to last a whole program. Beethoven is one of those composers. Not only that, but even today, some 200 years after his lifetime, his music continues to inspire, delight and challenge modern audiences. That is part of Beethoven’s enduring genius and legacy.
Read full review... | ||
| 10-May-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Not an outrageous start to Nico Muhly's A Scream and an Outrage weekend at the Barbican | Paul Kilbey |
 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.
Read full review... | ||
| 10-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Quartet for the End of Time at Queen Elizabeth Hall | Frances Wilson |
 The fascinating Rest is Noise festival at Southbank Centre has now reached its mid-point, with the focus on music created out of oppression and war. In Friday night’s chamber concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall two pieces written in the most straitened circumstances during the Second World War were presented: Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, a haunting lament for the tragic victims of the war and conflict in general, and Messiaen’s extraordinary Quatuor pour la fin du temps (“Quartet for the End of Time”), composed and premièred in a German prisoner of war camp.Read full review... | ||
| 10-May-2013 Cathedral Museum | Les Bougies Baroques present some 18th-century secrets in Malta | Anthony Hart |
 Picture a warm May evening, walking the narrow, silent, cool streets of the ancient capital of Malta, then sitting amongst a magnificent collection of 17th- and 18th-century art with a promise of secrets!
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| 10-May-2013 Cadogan Hall | Raucous Tchaikovksy from the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in London | Renée Reitsma, ypgtcm.blogspot.com |
 The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra continued their European tour with three programs at the Cadogan Hall, all with works by Tchaikovksy. As far as programming goes, the MSSO played it safe, but when it comes to Tchaikovksy this is not necessarily a criticism. In fact, the three pieces played on the first evening are my three favourite by the composer; his Marche Slave, First Piano Concerto, and Fourth Symphony.Read full review... | ||
| 10-May-2013 Kennedy Center: Opera House | Zambello's Show Boat at the Washington National Opera | Simon Chin |
 The arrival of Show Boat at the Washington National Opera this month, after stops in Chicago and Houston, has provoked a certain amount of consternation in operatic circles. Does Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1927 musical properly belong in the opera house, and should a precious slot in an opera company’s season be devoted to such popular and obviously commercial entertainment? Do the moneylenders need to be driven out of the temple?
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| 10-May-2013 St John's Smith Square | Lufthansa Festival opens with a ravishing Handel masterpiece | Nahoko Gotoh |
 After Friday’s sublime performance of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at the opening concert of 2013 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, I am puzzled why this ravishing masterpiece doesn’t enjoy wider popularity (although it was performed recently at the London Handel Festival). Perhaps it’s because the work doesn’t have a dramatic plot like Saul or Samson or it doesn’t have grand choral numbers like in the Messiah or Israel in Egypt.Read full review... | ||
| 9-May-2013 Severance Hall | Ton Koopman leads Cleveland Orchestra and Chamber Chorus in satisfying evening of Handel | Timothy Robson |
 Dutch keyboardist and conductor Ton Koopman this weekend completed his third and final season as artist-in-residence with The Cleveland Orchestra, leading an all-Handel program that also featured the Cleveland Orchestra Chamber Chorus. It was a musically satisfying program that showed the versatility of both orchestra and chorus.
Read full review... | ||
| 9-May-2013 Bridgewater Hall | The Rite of Spring with the BBC Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena | Rohan Shotton |
 Juanjo Mena concluded his season-long exploration of Stravinsky ballets with a sharp account of the most famous, The Rite of Spring, as part of a programme of unusually grand proportions.
Read full review... | ||
| 9-May-2013 Boston Opera House | Boston Ballet's Chroma: A powerful boost for the city's spirit | Kathryn Maus |
 When planning for the 2012/13 season, Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen could not have known how incredibly well-timed Chroma would seem for the Boston community. Following last month’s tragic events, the three selections comprising Chroma appear poised to lift the collective Bostonian spirit – it is a program that reflects on the past, reassuring the audience that traditions remain strong but that the future too is bright and brings with it a fresh new outlook.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 National Concert Hall | Pavel Kogan and Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in Dublin | Andrew Larkin |
 “From Russia with love” might have been an apt title for this evening’s performance from the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra on the Irish leg of their tour, for this was a concert designed to showcase all that is best in Russian music both in interpretation and in composition. With one of Moscow’s leading orchestras performing Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky under the baton of one of Russia’s most widely known and respected conductors, Pavel Kogan, it was a total immersion in Russian culture for the evening.Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | The stark glory of Robert Carsen's Dialogues des Carmélites with Canadian Opera Company | Stanley Fefferman |
 Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmélites has the virtues of necessity. Director Robert Carsten’s production puts these virtues before us in simple black and white. The virtues begin with the story: Blanche, an aristocrat afraid of the French Revolution who hopes to find refuge in a nunnery, becomes a refugee of religious persecution, and chooses to die a martyr with her sisters. The story is told with a minimum of props and no end of imaginative staging, lighting and costumes.Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 BBC Hoddinott Hall | Britten and Poulenc with Adrian Partington and the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales | Philip May |
.jpg) On Wednesday evening the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Adrian Partington, presented a programme of choral music by the two musical friends Poulenc and Britten. Interestingly, most of the works also originated from a narrow three-year period in the late 1930s (Poulenc was, at this stage, in his late 30s, Britten in his mid 20s), making the juxtaposition of the composers’ works all the more pertinent.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | Big, beautiful voices power AVA's Ballo | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 “For some operas,” famed conductor Carlo Maria Giulini once said, “you can accept a voice of not absolute beauty – if it is well used and he is an artist and interpreter, it will work. But for Verdi you need all this plus the essential sound.”
The Academy of Vocal Arts’ final production of the 2012/13 season, Verdi’s Un Ballo In Maschera, delivered a cadre of beautiful dramatic voices also capable of producing that “essential sound” critical to the opera’s success.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 Joyce Theater | Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet hits (and then misses) at the Joyce | Ivan Talijancic |
 For the occasion of what I believe has become Cedar Lake’s annual tradition of showcasing work at the Joyce Theater, this contemporary ballet troupe has assembled an impressive trio of guest choreographers – Nederlands Dans Theater’s former chief Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite and Andonis Foniadakis.Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 Volksoper Vienna | Albert Lortzing's Der Wildschütz returns to the Volksoper | Snapdragon |
 Under the headline “Why Lortzing?”, the evening’s programme lists 20 reasons by Lortzing biographer Jürgen Lodemann why this composer should not be forgotten, including the fact that Lortzing’s operas were the most-performed in Germany for about 150 years.Read full review... | ||
| 7-May-2013 La Maison Symphonique de Montréal | Itzhak Perlman plays Beethoven, Franck and Tartini in Montréal | Andrew Crust |
 Itzhak Perlman is certainly one of the most venerated recitalists alive today. Already at age thirteen he was making himself known to a wide American audience on the Ed Sullivan Show, and has since graced the stages of all the world’s greatest concert halls. He’s no stranger to Montréal, either. The violinist joked as he read a list of encores: “This is a computerized list of everything I’ve played in Montréal since 1912. In case you were here in 1912, I don’t want you to hear the same piece twice.”
Read full review... | ||
| 7-May-2013 Roulette | Brooklyn Youth Chorus with Kronos Quartet at Roulette | Rebecca Lentjes |
 Zoran Orlic.jpg) Roulette has never looked so snazzy: the usual dishevelled hipsters were replaced by well-dressed audience members of all ages, wearing heels rather than flannel, drinking from wine glasses rather than beer bottles. Ironically, the performers we were about to hear are not even old enough to drink: this was the Brooklyn Youth Chorus’ annual benefit concert, featuring collaborations with Kronos Quartet and other artists.Read full review... | ||
| 6-May-2013 Wigmore Hall | Eight extraordinary string players meet: The Arditti and JACK Quartets combine at Wigmore Hall | Paul Kilbey |
 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... | ||
| 5-May-2013 Civic Opera House | Lyric Opera of Chicago goes proto-American with Oklahoma! | Dan Wang |
 The Lyric Opera ends their 2013–14 season with a run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, in all its frothy, proto-American, miked glory. Pluck is in evidence throughout. No audience anywhere, let us presume, need ever fear that the scourges of European “director’s opera” will ever touch this story of proto-nationhood, nor even some light corporate facelift involving suits and uniformly gray sets.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 The Royal Conservatory of Music, TELUS Centre, Koerner Hall | A tribute to Dizzy Gilespie in Toronto: The Danilo Pérez Trio meets the Cecilia String Quartet | Stanley Fefferman |
 The Danilo Pérez Trio tribute to Dizzy Gillespie was many things, including an invitation to relax. It was also a showcase and world première for Camino de Cruces, Pérez’s contribution to the 500th anniversary celebration of the founding of Panama. His three-movement crossover work for piano and string quartet involved the collaboration of the Cecilia String Quartet currently in residence at the University of Toronto.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Abrons Arts Center | All of a Sudden: Jack Ferver does himself (again) at Abrons Arts Center | Ivan Talijancic |
| Jack Ferver is a well-loved figure on New York’s downtown performance circuit, so it is no wonder that I arrive to Abrons Arts Center’s largest space (the Playhouse) to find that every available seat in the house is full. For the uninitiated (though, arguably, the bulk of this crowd is not), the jewel-box theatre set-up, red velvet curtain and all, could be deceiving – it might be so, for instance, for the older lady with a heavy European accent I can’t quite place who is sitting right next to me. What kind of a performance is it that Ferver does... is it dance? Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Auckland Town Hall | A magical gala evening with Bryn Terfel in Auckland | Simon Holden |
 The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra really has the perfect Wagner sound. Their full, vibrant string tone and magnificent pealing brass were fully in evidence in a thrilling rendition of the concert version of the overture from Tannhäuser. Few moments in music are as exciting as the build-up to the Big Tune in this piece, and the orchestra’s performance here was barnstorming yet perfectly accurate.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | "I'm in love with Vienna": Renée Fleming and friends at Carnegie Hall | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 For the last concert of her Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall, Renée Fleming assembled one of the least coherent concept programmes imaginable. Billed as “Vienna: Window to Modernity”, it was never clear what was specifically Viennese about the music on show, nor what was particularly modern, nor what windows had to do with anything. If this was about the fin de siècle and the turbulent culture that accompanied the collapse of the Austrian empire, then historians are going to have to redefine what a siècle might be, let alone a fin.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Birdsong in Birmingham: Mitsuko Uchida with Andris Nelsons and the CBSO | Katherine Dixson, katherinedixson.co.uk |
 It wasn’t only Mitsuko Uchida’s hands that were agile. Her arrival on stage was accompanied by the deepest bow imaginable, bending from the waist until she resembled a tuning fork. Such Japanese formality was paired with a warm, glowing smile and a real connection with players and audience alike.
Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Eyebeam | John Cage's HPSCHD: Living art at Eyebeam in NYC | Rebecca Lentjes |
 This past Saturday, I spent five hours in a great big room with a cold concrete floor that was brimming from end to end with sounds and images and people. Three of the four walls, as well as a screen hanging from the ceiling and winding in an angle above, were morphing and spinning ceaselessly with celestial and kaleidoscopic images that were projected from the row of “Lightcircus” artists along the fourth wall.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's soul-searing Dialogues des Carmélites can't be missed | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 Of all the surprising backdrops for grand opera in the universe of operas, surely the prayers of a contemplative order of nuns top any list. Yet, this three-act opera was so riveting, soul-searing, and utterly shocking that audience members were bereft of their senses by the final act, and bereft is no exaggeration. The Carmelite convent of Compiègne during the French Revolution provides the most gripping setting imaginable for Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites.
Read full review... | ||
| 3-May-2013 Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater | New York City Ballet's evening with Jerome Robbins | Stephanie Sirabian |
 From lifelong fans to the previously uninitiated, New York City Ballet’s All Robbins program was designed to make the whole house cheer. Jerome Robbins’ (1918–98) work on Broadway and in ballet made him a revered artist in both circles. Few others were ever able to achieve such crossover success. Robbins’ choreography anticipates the viewers’ desires, providing humor, excitement and beauty in just the right mix.Read full review... | ||
| 3-May-2013 Colston Hall | Bach meets Fats Waller: Nigel Kennedy at Colston Hall, Bristol | Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres |
 The ever-eccentric Nigel Kennedy entered on stage in trainers, combat trousers, a pirate shirt with a shiny black jacket, and his staple punk hairstyle. Dressed as a rebel, his cheeky-chap persona grabbed the attention of the audience at Colston Hall for a night of Bach and Fats Waller in one.
Read full review... | ||
| 3-May-2013 Sage: Hall One | Northern Sinfonia: Bradley Creswick's blazing fiddle | Jane Shuttleworth |
 As their contribution to The Sage Gateshead’s weekend-long “Fiddles on Fire” festival, Northern Sinfonia presented a selection of solo violin and string music that artfully blurred the distinctions between musical periods and genres, putting the emphasis firmly on the instrument itself, and on the spirited playing of their leader, Bradley Creswick.
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| 3-May-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | John Wilson conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Vaughan Williams and York Bowen | Chris Garlick |
 An orgy of British music greeted an appreciative audience at the Barbican last night courtesy of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by British music enthusiast John Wilson. But it certainly wasn’t all Land of Hope and Glory, or indeed The Lark Ascending, with three contrasting pieces – all now sadly neglected in the concert hall.
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| 3-May-2013 The Engineers Club: Grand Ballroom | Heather Johnson gives Carmen new meaning in Baltimore | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
 One of my favorite things about opera in concert is the absence of director’s concept. Don’t take me wrong: I do enjoy a well-directed opera production with a concept. But let’s face it: how often does an opera artist get an opportunity to express his/her own vision of the character? Hardly ever, unless, liberated by the absence of director’s demands, the artist gives the role a bold treatment, and through it, inspires the audience to see a familiar opera at a different angle.
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| 3-May-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Bach unwrapped through brass: Onyx Brass at Kings Place | Julia Savage |
 I must admit that Bach through Brass, as this concert was entitled, filled me with a certain amount of trepidation. Bach, on instruments for which the music in the programme was not designed, on instruments which were not even around in Bach’s time (at least not in their modern-day form), did not sound immediately appealing; nevertheless, something drew me in, and I was pleasantly surprised.
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| 3-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Joy and wonder at Evgeny Kissin's Carnegie Hall recital | Rebecca Lentjes |
_cropped.jpg) Evgeny Kissin is more than a collection of bones and flesh and crazy hair: he is a sensation. Every May for the past several years, the pianist has performed a recital on the Perelman stage at Carnegie Hall, and every year the tickets have sold out by mid-October, seven or eight months in advance. These recitals are the pinnacle of any concert-goer’s season. They are the Super Bowl of classical music, or the release of a new Harry Potter book, or Easter Sunday, when suddenly church congregations surge to twice their usual attendance.Read full review... | ||
| 2-May-2013 İş Sanat | A family affair: Mischa, Lily and Sascha Maisky mesmerize Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 Mischa Maisky, the de-facto romantic cellist, gave the Istanbul audience a triple treat of passionate cello playing in Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Bruch, but surprisingly enough he was in most uninhibited during the Haydn concerto.
Read full review... | ||
| 2-May-2013 Auckland Town Hall | Auckland Philharmonia's Last Songs a mixed bag | Simon Holden |
 The Auckland Philharmonia and conductor Jun Märkl presented “Last Songs”, a programme of late works by Schubert, Richard Strauss and Zemlinsky. We opened with Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta, a work much admired by Schoenberg and Berg. There is a spiky quality to the music that is reminiscent of Hindemith and Stravinsky, though notably less acerbic than either. One can perceive the influences of both Neoclassicism and jazz and the romantic lushness that is a characteristic of Zemlinsky’s earlier work emerges only briefly here.Read full review... | ||
| 2-May-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Loving Lang Lang: Heroic Tchaikovsky and Nielsen with Dudamel in Los Angeles | Ted Ayala |
 Among among certain classical music cognoscenti, few statements will probably cause one to lose more cred than saying this: “I love Lang Lang.”
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| 2-May-2013 Sheldonian Theatre | Brian Cox and Oxford May Music present The Planets | Katy Wright |
 Oxford May Music has been fusing arts and science for six years now. Thursday’s concert was evidence of this interdisciplinary ethos. Themed around “The Planets”, the evening combined a two-piano version of Gustav Holst’s suite with a talk by physicist Brian Cox. The star of a number of radio and television programmes, Cox’s presence clearly played a major part in filling Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre (with a seating capacity of 900 people).
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| 2-May-2013 College of St Hild and St Bede Chapel | Haydn, Brahms and Janáček: a string quartet taster menu in Durham | Jane Shuttleworth |
_Benjamin Ealovega.jpg) Durham University’s concert series Musicon has been moving around different venues in the city over the last few years, and this year has been putting on concerts in the College chapel of St Hild and St Bede. The traditional sideways-facing rows of seats are sometimes a bit awkward for concerts, but the Allegri Quartet used the layout to their advantage, and positioned themselves in a circle right in the middle of the chapel, in the heart of the audience.Read full review... | ||
| 2-May-2013 Kennedy Center: Terrace Theater | Opera Lafayette's minimalistic Actéon conquers the Kennedy Center | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
 For almost two decades, Opera Lafayette has been known to DC opera fans as a period-based ensemble reviving long-forgotten gems of French Baroque and Rococo chamber opera repertoire. On Thursday night, the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater hosted Opera Lafayette’s most recent creation: its production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s pastorale/tragédie en musique Actéon.
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