| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 17-Jun-2013 Wigmore Hall | The Lawson Piano Trio and Clare Hammond in recital at Wigmore Hall | Frances Wilson |
 The Monday Platform at Wigmore Hall, presented by the Park Lane Group, showcased the impressive and varied talents of the Lawson Trio and pianist Clare Hammond. The Park Lane Group provides support, performance platforms, and other creative opportunities for talented young artists. Now in its 57th season, PLG has presented nearly 1,900 young artists over the years, many of whom have gone on to enjoy successful international careers.
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| 14-Jun-2013 Sheldonian Theatre | The Dawn of the Stradivarius: James Ehnes and La Serenissima in Oxford | Katy Wright |
 Beare Violins Ltd.jpg) “The name Stradivarius had an air of magic to me.” Virtuoso violinist James Ehnes’ statement manages to capture the air of reverence which underpinned Friday’s Music at Oxford concert. The gala marked the opening of the UK’s first Stradivarius exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, and two violins from the exhibition were on temporary release for the evening. Alongside Ehnes’ own “Marsick” instrument of 1715, he played the 1666 “Serdet” – the earliest instrument on display (pictured left) – and the 1711 “Parke” (pictured right).
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| 19-May-2013 Birmingham Town Hall | Violins galore with Vivaldi, Bach and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in Birmingham | Katherine Dixson, katherinedixson.co.uk |
 Marco Borggreve.jpg) What a lovely way to round off a weekend, with some feel-good favourites from one of the world’s finest early music ensembles. Currently in their silver jubilee season, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra actually began to emerge a couple of years earlier than their official 1987 launch. Several students from the College of Music in Freiburg, fortified and inspired by glasses of New Year sparkling wine, had decided to form a group to research, experiment and play on Baroque instruments.Read full review... | ||
| 18-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Bach, Schumann and Schubert with Borletti-Buitoni Trust artists at Southbank Centre | Jack Smith, www.jdsmusic.co.uk |
 A series of three concerts over the course of one weekend, designed to reflect upon and champion the work of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, which has supported a significant number of worthy performers in its first ten years, was always going to present an interesting range of repertoire – if not something of a conundrum for those planning the programming of the concerts. Originally, Saturday’s concert was to have drawn together rather neatly the ensemble works of Mozart and Schubert, contrasted with interlinking sets of songs by Brahms and Mahler.Read full review... | ||
| 15-May-2013 Chicago Symphony Center | Yo-Yo Ma and company entertain at Chicago Symphony Center | Dan Wang |
 Yo-Yo Ma, currently the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with members from the same orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, took the stage at Symphony Center for a single night last Wednesday.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.
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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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| 26-Apr-2013 St George's Bristol | Fugal artistry II: Angela Hewitt completes Bach's The Art of Fugue | David Fay |
 In the week when Culture Secretary Maria Miller told arts organisations across the UK to show her the money, it seems inappropriate to begin this review by commenting on the length of concert intervals – they are, after all, vital for venues to make a few pounds selling drinks to a culture-thirsty clientele. Nonetheless, the period separating the two halves of Angela Hewitt’s Art of Fugue performance was considerably longer than St George’s Bristol’s customary 25-minute break. Six months had passed since Hewitt began her journey through Bach’s fugal masterpiece, which I was fortunate enough to witness last October.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Echoes of Bach: Principal players of Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place | Julia Savage |
 “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, goes the familiar phrase, and that can be applied in life to any number of things, including music. Were the father of harmony, Johann Sebastian Bach, still alive today, he would be beyond flattered.Read full review... | ||
| 17-Apr-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Murray Perahia at the Barbican in Haydn, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin | Chris Garlick |
 Driving home after Murray Perahia’s stunning recital at the Barbican last night I found myself thinking: why is he such an extraordinary pianist? Some pianists have an incredible rhythmic sense, some technical wizardry, others a delicate musical sensibility, but rarely are all these and many others qualities combined in one artist. But this was how I was left feeling on that drive home. In addition, one senses a perceptive and generous personality in the man, seeking out the meaning in his composers’ works, and not imposing his own ideas.
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| 13-Apr-2013 Severance Hall | James Feddeck leads an exciting rethinking of Carmina Burana in Cleveland | Timothy Robson |
 When Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst had to bow out of this past weekend’s performances of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana due to a recent back injury, the orchestra’s talented young assistant conductor, James Feddeck, inherited a high-profile assignment. The set of four concerts had been heavily promoted and were sold out. Feddeck chose not to take the safe and easy way out, with a bland run-through; instead he totally rethought Carmina and came up with a strikingly fresh and exciting reading.Read full review... | ||
| 8-Apr-2013 St Antoine Church | Old music in an old church: The Corelli Consort in Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 If there’s one glowing aspect missing from the burgeoning classical music scene in Istanbul, it is chamber music. The city has been a host to an increasingly diverse range of musical performances and festivals in the last few years, thanks to rather effective sponsorship arrangements, as well as small organizations, and sometimes even individuals, taking charge in organizing concert series.
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| 7-Apr-2013 Salle Pleyel | Sir John Eliot Gardiner blows Paris audience away at Salle Pleyel | Leopold Tobisch |
 Writing a positive review is not an easy task. When confronted with something lacking error, a review can go one of two ways: a brief and simple praise of all involved and a summary of the evening, or an over-the-top full-blown confession of awe and admiration. Spoiler alert: this review is the latter. To be lost for words is traditionally taken as a positive sign; yet when one’s duty is to summarise the event that knocked you for six, this lack of words proves rather problematic. Nonetheless, here goes…
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| 30-Mar-2013 The Birnam Institute | An evening of classics in Birnam with Chamber Philharmonic Europe | David Smythe |
 The Chamber Philharmonic Europe is an orchestra of some sixty players from all over Europe, founded in Cologne in 2006. During this past month, ten of its players have been touring a popular classical programme round small venues across the country, taking classical music to the far-flung reaches of the kingdom. Heading south from concerts in Thurso and Inverurie, this performance found them in Birnam Arts Centre near Dunkeld, Scotland, where a decent crowd filled the hall.
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| 29-Mar-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Ex Cathedra's Good Friday St Matthew Passion at Symphony Hall, Birmingham | Andrew H. King |
 Any venue, cathedral or concert hall, that advertises a Good Friday performance of J.S. Bach’s epic St Matthew Passion is likely to sell out; even Birmingham’s vast Symphony Hall is no exception, today being full to bursting with eager parishioners making their annual pilgrimage to wallow in Bach’s all-consuming musical ministry.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Mar-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | The many faces of Christ: Hanno Müller-Brachmann stars in OSL's St Matthew Passion | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 In his biography of Richard Wagner, Michael Tanner writes that Tristan und Isolde is one of two great masterpieces that have the musical brilliance, the intellectual strength and the emotional power to convert you to its philosophical cause. The other, naturally, is the St Matthew Passion.
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| 28-Mar-2013 Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) | The St Matthew Passion in Dresden | Matthew Lynch |
| J.S. Bach didn’t write an opera, but if he had, it’d probably be the best opera in the world. Fortunately for us, he wrote the next best thing, his Mattäus-Passion, a work of such dramatic power, that even in the concert or church settings in which it is usually performed, its highly emotional narrative thread is still captivating. However, it is precisely this dramatic element, which demands it to be sung as a work of theatre, full of bare human sentiment. The singers are representing real characters with real emotions and the audience should feel that and suffer with them.
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| 27-Mar-2013 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées | Bach's St John Passion receives a passionate reception in Paris | Leopold Tobisch |
 Bach’s Passion according to St John the Evangelist is not an easy work. Whilst saying I am a “fan” of Bach is one of the greatest understatements possible, this Passion is nonetheless an intense work for any concert-goer (seasoned or amateur) including myself. Over two hours in length, it is a test on both the audience and, quite obviously, the performers.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Mar-2013 National Concert Hall | Grosvenor in miniature at the National Concert Hall, Dublin | Andrew Larkin |
 If Benjamin Grosvenor were a wine, his tasting notes might read something like: “an outstanding early vintage, this is already a fine, well-balanced red, with subtlety of flavour. Can be quaffed now though should mature exceedingly well.” There are two things that are constantly remarked upon by critics in relation to this British pianist: firstly, that he is young and secondly the remarkable tone he possesses. What is remarkable about his youth is the innate wisdom and depth in his playing. If I had to summarise his playing style in two words, they would be “elegant restraint”.Read full review... | ||
| 25-Mar-2013 St George's Bristol | Baroque ABCs: Musicians from the OAE and John Butt at St George's Bristol | David Fay |
.jpg) It can’t be often that one of the world’s pre-eminent Bach scholar-interpreters teams up with one of the world’s most famous period instrument ensembles to give a concert dedicated to one of the world’s most celebrated composers in one of the world’s most renowned acoustics. Such a combination of exemplars makes for an eye-catching promotional poster and, more importantly, an ear-catching performance.Read full review... | ||
| 17-Mar-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Dunedin Consort present the St Matthew Passion at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Alan Coady |
 Passion is not for the faint-hearted. This performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion weighed in at three hours (excluding interval). However, my attention did not waver, and this seemed true of the rest of enraptured audience. When digesting Dunedin Consort director John Butt’s scholarly yet very readable programme notes beforehand, I was staggered to learn that, at just about the time our audience would be stretching its legs, the congregation at the 1727 première, would have remained seated for the pivotal part of the event: the sermon.
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| 17-Mar-2013 Auckland Town Hall | A splendid brew: Coffee with Mr Bach at the Auckland Arts Festival | Simon Holden |
 Rare is the chance for Aucklanders to hear period instruments at all, let alone Bach’s masterpieces played on them. Age of Discovery has been active since 2006, dedicated to performing pre-19th-century music on instruments of the period. Leaving aside the thorny questions of authenticity and composer’s intent, there is something so breezy and vibrant about the sound of Age of Discovery’s instruments that it was a joy to behold.Read full review... | ||
| 14-Mar-2013 Birmingham Town Hall | Stephen Kovacevich plays the "three Bs" in Birmingham | Peter Marks |
 Though born in America, Stephen Kovacevich has lived in London since moving there to study with the great Dame Myra Hess at the age of eighteen. He clearly has a special rapport with British audiences, as his amiable manner in discussing his encores demonstrated. In fact, one of his “encores” was given at the start of the second half of the programme (“why do encores have to be at the end?” he joked).
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| 14-Mar-2013 Birmingham Town Hall | Dancing at lunchtime with Benjamin Grosvenor | Katherine Dixson, katherinedixson.co.uk |
 As part of Birmingham’s International Concert Season, there’s a series of lunchtime performances from rising stars, entitled “Bright Futures”. Benjamin Grosvenor has done so much already by the tender age of 20 that one wonders how much brighter it can get!Read full review... | ||
| 13-Mar-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | NY Philharmonic and Choral Artists blaze through Bach's culminating masterwork | Joseph Pfender |
 Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work. Slight hiccups in vocal performance included, the music came across brilliantly. If the decisive blow is always struck left-handed, then Gilbert and the full choral-symphonic ensemble struck with both.
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| 8-Mar-2013 St George's Bristol | Bring on the Baroque: The Bristol Baroque Festival begins at St George's with Bach's St John Passion | David Fay |
 I’ve had the great privilege and even greater joy over the last couple of months to have been totally immersed in Bach: I’ve been researching him, and particularly his Passions, since Christmas. My immense luck only increased, however, when the inaugural concert at the first ever Bristol Baroque Festival of Music at St George’s was set to be a performance of the St John Passion, given by new-kids-on-the-period-instrument-block ensemble La Nuova Musica.Read full review... | ||
| 7-Mar-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | SCO with Matthias Goerne in orchestrated Schubert Lieder | Alan Coady |
 Size mattered in this programme, whether in the form of piano originals filled out to orchestral proportions, or Romantic reach reined in by Classical sensibility. The evening’s opening gesture was down to one man, Ian White, whose muted trombone ushered in Webern’s orchestration of the Ricercar from Bach’s 1747 Musical Offering. This zany and delicate treatment says all that can be said about the colour that orchestration can bring to a keyboard original.Read full review... | ||
| 6-Mar-2013 İş Sanat | An exemplary partnership: Emmanuel Pahud and Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra in Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra is no stranger when it comes to working with world-renowned soloists – their earlier collaborative roster includes the likes of Sviatoslav Richter, Menuhin, Rostropovich et al, but their rapport with Emmanuel Pahud is something that transcends musical partnership and wanders into the organically-knit companionship territory. The program chosen for this evening kept one foot firmly rooted in staples of Baroque, while stretching its legs wide enough to reach lesser-known works from later eras.
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| 6-Mar-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Magical Mitsuko: Bach, Schoenberg and Schumann at the Royal Festival Hall | Frances Wilson |
 As part of this year’s International Piano Series at the Southbank Centre, Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida gave a highly absorbing and exquisitely presented performance of works by Bach, Schoenberg and Schumann.Read full review... | ||
| 5-Mar-2013 Birmingham Town Hall | A bright and brilliant lunchtime in Birmingham with Jayson Gillham | Katherine Dixson, katherinedixson.co.uk |
 No wonder Jayson Gillham looked pleased to be back on stage at Birmingham Town Hall. It must have brought back some happy memories, as it was here that he won first prize in the 2011 Brant International Piano Competition. In the intervening couple of years, he’s built up an inspiring CV. He played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Hallé as a finalist in the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition, was named Commonwealth Musician of the Year, 2012, and has accumulated concert credits throughout London, across Europe and back home in Australia.Read full review... | ||
| 4-Mar-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Visionary music-making: The Australian Chamber Orchestra in The Reef | David Larkin |
 For many reasons, the ACO’s most recent show The Reef was an artistic experience like no other in all my years of concert-going. It is difficult even categorising the event: an orchestral concert with accompanying video footage? A film with live soundtrack?Read full review... | ||
| 27-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | Baltic music and Bach: Alina Ibragimova and Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican | Paul Kilbey |
 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... | ||
| 22-Feb-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Bach Unwrapped: Carolyn Sampson and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields at Kings Place | Emily Owen |
 Tonight’s programme was a real treat for Bach enthusiasts: one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world performing two of the most popular concertos, joined by Carolyn Sampson for two heart-wrenching cantatas for soprano and obbligato flute. We started with Cantata 209, “Non sa che sia dolore”. The story behind this cantata is something of a mystery – no-one knows when or why Bach wrote it, or if indeed he was the composer. It may have been composed for Bach’s friend Matthias Gesner, who was born near the town of Ansbach which is referred to in the anonymous text.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Feb-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | Bach stays wrapped up: The Art of Fugue with Fretwork | Paul Kilbey |
 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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| 18-Feb-2013 Kings Place: Hall Two | Pekka Kuusisto: Bach and electronic improvisations | Emily Owen |
 It seems an unlikely concert title: Bach and electronic improvisations, but that is exactly what the unassuming Pekka Kuusisto informed us we were going to be experiencing at Kings Place on Monday night. Walking on to the stage in Hall Two, lit with coloured spotlights and carrying an electric blue minimalist electric violin along with a traditional instrument, one could have mistaken Kuusisto for a stage hand.Read full review... | ||
| 13-Feb-2013 Théâtre Rialto | Classical music revisited with Collectif 9 | Andrew Crust |
 The string nonet Collectif 9 offers its public something truly as valuable as it is rare: classical repertoire “revisited with passion and fearlessness”. They are a group of very young and fiercely talented string players, many of whom play in the city’s professional orchestras. They enthusiastically align themselves with the growing movement called Classical Revolution which seeks to bring “art music” to a variety of venues and audiences with the goal of obliterating the stigmas of musty conventionalism and tradition far too often associated with the genre.
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| 10-Feb-2013 La Maison Symphonique de Montréal | The four Lutheran masses of J.S. Bach with Les Violons du Roy | Andrew Crust |
 Today’s apt sunday afternoon concert featured the four Lutheran masses of J.S. Bach. Although the music itself was not entirely new, but instead recycled material, and despite the text which repeats in each mass, the work is fresh and rich with counterpoint and the emotional Affekt Bach is so known for.
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| 8-Feb-2013 University of Southampton: Turner Sims | The Academy of Ancient Music master Bach's Orchestral Suites in Southampton | Katy S. Austin |
 Today it is thought that J.S. Bach’s chamber and ensemble music, including the four Orchestral Suites, date from his time in Leipzig from the 1720s onwards. When all the Orchestral Suites (BWV1066–1069) are put together, their inventive and varied nature is evident. The suites make great use of all ensemble instruments and incorporate a range of structures, as well as internal forms and dances.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Jan-2013 Kings Place: Hall One | The St Matthew Passion with the AAM and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge | Emily Owen |
 With such a star-studded line-up at a concert that had been sold out for weeks, this was always going to be an evening to remember. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of those iconic pieces that never gets old, and every time I hear the throbbing bass of the opening chorus, I still get a tingle of excitement.Read full review... | ||
| 22-Jan-2013 St Lawrence Centre For The Arts: Jane Mallett Theatre | Marc-André Hamelin makes his mark as composer-pianist in Toronto | Stanley Fefferman |
 The virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin played a program of works by Bach, Fauré, Ravel and Rachmaninov, bracketed by his own Variations on a theme by Paganini. Last March in Toronto, when Hamelin snuck this piece into the program as an encore, I wrote that it was “ten minutes of the most fun you’ll ever have crowding around a piano at the end of party.” Now that the Variations are in the program, and Hyperion has recently issued Hamelin’s 12 Études in all the minor keys, we might as well begin identifying Hamelin as a “pianist-composer” in the same league as Rachmaninov.
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| 19-Jan-2013 Geertekerk | Amandine Beyer leads a musical journey with the solo violin works of J.S. Bach | Kristen Huebner |
 A stunning Amandine Beyer courageously took the stage this weekend during a string of concerts surrounding the theme of J.S. Bach during Utrecht’s Bach Dag (Bach Day). Comprising seven concerts on Saturday alone in churches inside the beautiful city of Utrecht, this two-day event was produced by the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht (Utrecht Early Music Festival). The Bach Dag was a microcosm of the larger festival which takes place in August–September each year in venues all across the city, attracting, like this weekend, the very top musicians from the world of early music.
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| 18-Jan-2013 Jesuits' Church | New Century Baroque in the footsteps of the Grand Tour | Anthony Hart |
 My sweet course of the sumptuous feast, under the title of the Valletta International Baroque Festival, arrived on 18 January. The fare was a selection of various European deserts, performed by the New Century Baroque at the Jesuit Church in Valletta.
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| 17-Jan-2013 St John's Co-Cathedral | Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment pays a tribute to Maltese Baroque music in Valletta | Anthony Hart |
 The main course of the sumptuous feast, under the title of the Valletta International Baroque Festival, arrived on 17 January. The fare was an international favourite with a Maltese surprise.
The concert, the eighth in the series, was given by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the magnificent setting of the ornate St John’s Co-Cathedral.
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| 16-Jan-2013 Ashmolean Museum | Fine cantatas from John Lubbock with the Orchestra of St John's in Oxford | Katy Wright |
 Wednesday night’s concert was the first in the Orchestra of St John’s Proms at the Ashmolean series of the new year. John Lubbock led the orchestra, the OSJ Ashmolean Voices and soloists Johnny Herford and Louise Wayman through lively performances of Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and J.S. Bach’s Liebster Jesu, mein Verlagen. If this concert is anything to go by, 2013 promises to be a fine year for orchestra and singers alike.
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| 15-Jan-2013 Teatru Manoel | Valletta International Baroque Festival: Jeune Orchestre Atlantique revives Maltese music | Anthony Hart |
 If we consider the word “festival” and its synonym “feast”, the Valletta International Baroque Festival, which started on 9 January and continues to 26 January, has proven to be a sumptuous feast, nay, a veritable banquet.
The festival has brought Baroque music to a Baroque city. It is the city’s first, hopefully not the last, festival of music of the Baroque period. The concerts have provided a kaleidoscope of music of the period featuring both local and international talent.
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| 13-Jan-2013 Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: Fifth floor | Bach, Schumann and Scharwenka at Le Salon de Musiques | Ted Ayala |
 An entire century. Actually, it’s been 101 years and some months if we want to be specific. That’s how long it took for US audiences to hear the magisterial Piano Quintet in B minor, Op. 118 by German composer Philipp Scharwenka. Through no fault of the music, I should add.
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| 11-Jan-2013 Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh | Holland Baroque Society shows its true colors with works by Fux and Bach | Kristen Huebner |
 The energetic Holland Baroque Society presented a lively program juxtaposing works of Johann Joseph Fux and Johann Sebastian Bach this week. Evident from the start was the group’s overarching enthusiasm and passion for this particular repertoire. The atmosphere reflected the musicians onstage, full of youth and infused with a breath of new life. Led by a strong and vibrant Tineke Steenbrink on the organ and the harpsichord, the group of fifteen musicians was clearly in good hands.
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| 9-Jan-2013 Wigmore Hall | Understated bravado: Leon McCawley at Wigmore Hall | Frances Wilson |
 Acclaimed British pianist Leon McCawley opened the Wigmore Hall’s 2013 London Pianoforte Series with a varied programme of piano music by masters of the instrument spanning two centuries, from Bach to Rachmaninov.
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| 30-Dec-2012 Kings Place: Hall One | Florilegium unwrap Bach at Kings Place | Edward Whitney |
 Seasonal concert programmes come in all shapes and sizes. Reflecting the many sides of Christmas, they range from the commercial to the spiritual, from bombastic celebrity endorsement to the simplicity of choristers by candlelight. Florilegium’s concert at Kings Place was most appropriate for the restorative days that fall after the excitement of Christmas and before the Strauss of New Year’s. It gave a balanced, sober nod to seasonality and opened a new concert series which is set to extend well into December 2013; Bach Unwrapped.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Dec-2012 Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn | Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra shines in the Christmas Oratorio | Kristen Huebner |
 The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra summoned the spirit of the holiday season this weekend with their performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. The work was originally composed for church services taking place during the Christmas season of 1734. Tonight’s performance featured the entire work, which was originally split into six sections, each intended for a different day.
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