Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9 National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda (NSO)I’m old enough to remember the BBC offering free downloads of the ..read more

Everyone needs friends and everything is connected. As we throw the doors open on to the 2024 Leeds Lieder Festival I am struck by just how ..read more

All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated their intention to reign for ever and ever. Those very words as set by Handel in his “Hallelujah” Chorus were treated fugally by Mendelssohn in the coruscating finale of his Octet, and as part of her own homage in the Partita for String Octet, Sally Beamish approached them very differently. Her ethereal fugue deserves immortality, too ..read more

For tonight’s performance at Milton Court, the nuanced and delicate tones of strings, voices, harmonium and chamber organ will merge and mingle ..read more

Anyone who’d booked to hear soprano Sally Matthews or to witness the rapid progress of conductor Daniele Rustioni – the initial draw for me – could not have been disappointed in their late-stage replacements. Elizabeth Watts is as much of a national treasure among singers as Matthews, and Jader Bignamini, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, negotiated his first Barbican concert with absolute mastery ..read more

It’s hard to know which aspect of this adventure to praise the most. Perhaps the fact that of the four recent works originally programmed, the two ..read more

At first glance, this looked like an odd coupling: Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto from 1931, all spiky neo-classicism and short-winded expressionist ..read more

The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme ..read more

For the second big concert of his “residency” with the Hallé this season, Thomas Adès chose one major piece of his own, rather than a set of shorter ones. Tevot, a 21-minute one-movement work written for the Berlin Philharmonic 18 years ago, requires a huge assembly of performers, so it was probably too good a chance to miss once having taken the decision to do Tippett’s Triple Concerto, which is pretty lavish in that regard, too ..read more

Milton Court, like its parent Barbican Hall, disconcertingly inflates the sound of larger ensembles and voices. Had there been a conductor for all four pieces in the Britten Sinfonia’s programme - Michael Papadopoulos was there for the two most recent works – the approach might have been more nimble and nuanced. Though Mozart in masterpiece form could have been a gambit to entice warier punters, a fourth British work would have rounded out the overall picture better ..read more