Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
¨How can you fail with Tosca? … If you fail with Tosca, then there is something incredibly wrong¨, Sir Bryn Terfel told me recently. The Welsh bass-baritone is currently performing at Royal Opera Covent Garden in Jonathan Kent’s revived staging […]
An intoxicated man dressed in a white suit, wearing a panama hat enters during the ouverture. He announces that ‘Love is like Death’. I’m not sure who he is quoting, but it’s not Nietzsche, who apparently saw the opera at […]
PROM 61 Thomas Ades, Anton Bruckner, Sir Simon Rattle, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle knows Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony like the back of his hand. He had no need for a score when he conducted the work with […]
PROM 56 Sunday 1 September Berliner Philharmoniker Kirill Petrenko Anton Bruckner’s grandiose symphonies are not everybody’s cup of Grüner Veltliner. Even now, almost 150 years since the Austrian composer wrote his Fifth Symphony, there will be people – maybe even […]
For the first time the combined forces of the Royal College of Music and the Sibelius Academy (Finland) amassed on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall. To debut in front of 5000 people must be quite a daunting experience, […]
PROM 56 2024 BRUCKNER Os Justi, Locus iste, Christus factus est, Symphony No.5 in B flat major A visit by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to the BBC Proms is guaranteed to be one of the festival’s highlights. I think their […]
Prom 14, July 2024 will be recorded in the annals as the Yunchan Lim Prom. With the Royal Albert Hall packed to the acoustic mushroom rafters, the noise welcoming the South Korean pianist sensation was nothing short of tumultuous. In […]
BBC Proms Saturday 14 August 2021 S.Prokofiev Symphony no.1, J.S.Bach Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056, W.A. Mozart Piano concerto no.24, D. Shostakovich Symphony no.9
BBC Proms 5 August Ruth Gipps Symphony No.2 in B major, Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel Symphony, Johannes Brahms Symphony No.3 in F major I have been sitting it out for nine months, waiting for proper concerts with a live […]
The Hallé is one of Britain’s oldest orchestras and it is no surprise that they have championed many compositions at an early stage, before they became true classics. The orchestra’s founder, Charles Hallé, put Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture on the repertoire […]
Sunday 27 may 2018, Handel Festival Halle The late-Gothic Ulrichskirche in Halle (Saale) has been a concert hall since the 1970s and the massive concert organ is now a bit of a feature. It is not old, but if you […]
Bucharest is not a place you fall in love with straight away. It might take a few days. Or, as in my case, a return visit. Seventy years ago the monarchy was abolished and instead a Romanian People’s Republic was […]