Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Harmonium, for chorus and orchestra

Pianist brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen spar with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Poulenc before John Adams’ epic Harmonium.

In combining two works of contemporary American composer John Adams with Beethoven's most iconic symphony, Conductor Emeritus Morlot gave the audience much to think about.

Ryan Bancroft and the BBC NOW offer scintillating playing in John Adams’ Harmonium, plus an exciting world premiere from Derrick Skye and a stunning Copland concerto with clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe.

Mass hysteria, Schiller’s Ode to Joy and Wild Nights – a heady mix for this year’s opening night of the BBC Proms from Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Thank goodness for the BBCSO! The London concert season would be far less colourful without it...

John Adams’s Harmonium accompanied the third instalment in the Hallé Beethoven cycle to form an exciting programme of music united by being very radical in its time. Harmonium, composed in 1980, is a choral triptych of ‘poems of transcendental vision,’ as the composer writes, underpinned by minimalism inspired by the likes of Reich and Glass.

Saturday night at the Barbican Centre was anything but ordinary. Performing two works by composers John Adams and Roberto Gerhard, the Crouch End Festival Chorus (CEFC) and London Orchestra da Camera, conducted by David Temple, achieved harmonic brilliance and chilling dissonance in a single evening. The first half of the night was devoted to John Adams’ Harmonium.