Modern vs Baroque violin? Vibrato vs non-vibrato? Listening to Alina Ibragimova’s performance in this year’s Late Night Bach Prom series, such simplistic distinctions seemed meaningless.
For modern ears, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy is a curious beast, a hybrid of orchestral, concertante and choral genres and thus quite difficult to programme in a regular concert.
Traditionally at the Proms, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is reserved for the penultimate prom slot in September, but this year, they have made an exception and given it to the CBSO and Andris Nelsons.
Hampstead Garden Opera’s new staging of Xerxes is slick and contemporary with a well thought-out re-interpretation of the plot, offering a fresh perspective to the opera.
J.C. Bach's opera Adriano in Siria, set to a popular libretto by Metastasio, was first performed in London in January 1765 when the nine-year-old Mozart was in town.
Amadè Players’ concert entitled “Forgotten Vienna” was conceived by the conductor and scholar Nicholas Newland, who has a strong affinity with the music of eighteenth-century Bohemian composers.
Is Handel’s Semele an oratorio or an opera? Of course Handel himself called it an oratorio but some suggest it is the English-language opera that he never wrote.
Rafał Blechacz is known within the piano world as the winner of the 2005 Chopin International Piano Competition, but on the whole, he has kept a fairly low media profile since.
Such is the growing popularity of the solo countertenor voice that in this past week I was able to hear four countertenor performances in London - the latest being Max Emanuel Cenčić.
On several occasions when I listened to Brahms’s first piano concerto in concert, I was left wondering whether Brahms really intended the pianist to play with so much physical force.
In the first half of the 19th century, the piano was still very much a developing instrument, and the composers were often pushing its limits both mechanically and sonically.
Following Plácido Domingo in 2009 and Riccardo Muti in 2011, this year's Birgit Nilsson Prize was awarded to the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra with which Nilsson had a long and fruitful relationship.
When compared to the operas of Handel, Vivaldi’s operas are still relative rarities either on stage or in concert. There have been a handful of performances in UK in the last five years...
Of the ten or so orchestras I’ve listened to during this year’s Proms, the Cleveland Orchestra’s sound was perhaps the most polished, sophisticated (especially the silky strings) and disciplined of all.
One of the pleasures of the BBC Proms is to survey the current state of our regional orchestras and I was really looking forward to the Hallé's visit with Mark Elder. Yet, at the end of the concert, I felt curiously unfulfilled.
It is perhaps inevitable that a Greek Baroque ensemble on their first visit to the Proms would want to showcase a programme with a link to their ancient heritage.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is often described as a crucial composer in the transition between the Baroque and Classical periods, but we never seem to be able to move beyond this image.
This year we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of Rameau’s death and the BBC Proms has invited French Baroque specialists Les Arts Florissants to give a pair of contrasting concerts of his music.
