She plays barefoot in jeans with a thrilling unpredictability that makes every show electric. Ahead of a performance that promises to transform the concert stage into a living room, we meet the whirlwind violinist ‘Something should happen in a concert,” says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. “I don’t know what. But every time, I’m expecting a miracle. I’m not very humble about this!” If audiences have learned to expect inspiring and surprising things from this restless and unpredictable violinist, that’s nothing compared to the standards she sets for herself. On stage, Kopatchinskaja is an impish prese ..read more

Musician had held top roles at Glyndebourne opera and in Chicago, Melbourne and Toronto orchestras Sir Andrew Davis, a conductor who performed with many of the world’s finest orchestras, has died at the age of 80. Throughout his long career Davis held many roles, including for more than a decade those of chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) and musical director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera ..read more

Royal Opera House, London Nadine Sierra is sensationally good as Lucia in this revival of Katie Mitchell’s production of Donizetti’s romantic tragedy – a dark, thoughtful and sometimes shocking interpretation for the post-#MeToo era These are beleaguered times for opera in Britain. But this revival of Donizetti’s adaptation of Walter Scott showcases one immense reason why opera will outlast its critics: the singing. After acclaim for Asmik Grigorian’s Cio-Cio San and Aigul Akhmetshina’s Carmen in recent weeks, Nadine Sierra’s Lucia di Lammermoor completes a Covent Garden spring soprano hat-tri ..read more

Susie Sainsbury theatre; Royal Festival Hall; St Martin-in-the-Fields, London Pegasus Opera sparks change with a tart two-hander and a woman on the edge; teenage brass players show their mettle; and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields do their founder proud As a scenario for a chamber opera, try this: two women of “ripe but well-cared-for middle age” (an enviable condition) reminisce as old friends but soon reveal themselves bitter rivals, each harbouring a shocking secret. Edith Wharton’s featherlight short story Roman Fever (1934) can nearly be lifted straight from the page to make a cris ..read more

St John’s Smith Square, London Lee Reynolds’ reduced arrangements of Schoenberg and Mahler were convincing and involving The concerts of the Society for Private Musical Performances that Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils established in Vienna in 1919 regularly included performances of arrangements that reduced contemporary orchestral scores to more convenient ensemble proportions. But even Schoenberg avoided the challenge of scaling down his monodrama Erwartung, one of the landmark achievements of his atonal expressionist years. Yet, that was the task that conductor Lee Reynolds set himself, an ..read more

Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterOpera Rara joined with the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder for this semi-staged performance of the original version of Verdi’s opera Twenty-five years separate the action in the prologue and first act of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, and very nearly the same stretch of time elapsed between the opera’s first incarnation – whose opening night in 1857 the composer wrote off, a touch unjustly, as a “fiasco” – and its revised second version, premiered in 1881. The latter has more or less kept a foothold in the standard repertory ever since; but it’s the 1857 original, which Opera ..read more

McCreesh/Stéphany/Spence/Foster-Williams (Signum, two CDs)Paul McCreesh’s historically informed performance of the composer’s greatest choral work has many gains but ultimately never really catches fire Paul McCreesh isn’t the first conductor to attempt to recreate the orchestral sound that Elgar would have imagined when composing his greatest choral work – in 2009 Jeffrey Skidmore conducted period-instrument performances of The Dream of Gerontius in Birmingham and London with mixed results – but this is the first to appear on disc. In his sleeve notes McCreesh painstakingly details the proven ..read more

Gerstein/Mantashyan/Skanavi/Adès (Platoon, two CDs)Claude Debussy’s piano music written in the last few years of his life interspersed with works by ethnomusicologist and composer Komitas Vardapet Claude Debussy completed his final orchestral work, the ballet Jeux, in 1913. Through the years of the first world war, up to his death in 1918, he composed piano works, songs and the first three of a planned set of six sonatas. Kirill Gerstein’s fascinatingly compiled collection, which comes handsomely packaged with essays and contemporary photographs, concentrates on the piano music and songs, whi ..read more

The Venue, Leeds Conservatoire The song festival – with Arts Council funding reinstated – opened with a meaty all-Schubert programme full of delights and camaraderie A double anniversary would be cause enough for celebration – 2024 marks Leeds Lieder’s 20th year, and a decade of pianist Joseph Middleton’s leadership – but the festival has other reasons to be cheerful: the reinstatement of its Arts Council England funding, abruptly withdrawn last year, and the consequent outpouring of generosity from its friends onstage and off, which Middleton’s introductory note credits squarely with keeping ..read more

The great British conductor was born 100 years ago today. His son Andrew picks his father’s most memorable recordings As a five-year-old, I sat spellbound on the stairs outside our living room. The furniture had been removed to to make space for a handful of string players, there to rehearse and play with no end in mind other than the pure pleasure of making music. The conductorless string chamber group founded by my father Neville was named “The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields” (ASMF), after the church in which it rehearsed, and gave its first concert in the Trafalgar Square church on 13 N ..read more