Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | François-Frédéric Guy

Yip Wing-sie and the HK Sinfonietta show admirable qualities in their Beethoven cycle. François-Frédéric Guy plays a splendid Third Piano Concerto but Anne Queffélec is disconnected from the orchestra in the Fourth.

With only the latest composition by Tristan Murail acting as a palate-cleanser, this was a recital by a leading French pianist that was full of Romantic power and passion in works by Chopin and Beethoven.

Will this centenary year yield a finer Vaughan Williams symphony performance than this account of the Fourth? 

A (nearly) complete set of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano from the French friends in London. 

Phillips and Guy produce a French-accented rendering of three cello sonatas, favouring elegance and crystal clarity over overt romantics.

French pianists François-Fréderic Guy and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet returned to London’s Wigmore Hall to present a programme of three 20th century orchestral scores transcribed for two pianos. 

Outside of the opera pit, Marc Albrecht and his Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra demonstrated their magic at the Concertgebouw.

François-Frédéric Guy proves the ideal Beethoven interpreter is his "It's All About the Piano" recital at the Institut français in Kensington. 

Occasionally one comes across an artist who seems so at one with the music, that one can almost hear the composer at the artist’s shoulder saying ”yes, that is what I meant”.

There are times when a concert, even those featuring famous and oft-heard works, can be utterly rejuvenating.Tonight’s performance presented a pair of grand minor-key works by two emotional heavyweights of the 19th century.

In a neat piece of programming, Monday’s Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert brought together two French master-pianists to play two French masterpieces for the ballet, Debussy’s Jeux and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, both transcribed for two pianos.The works are, in fact, old friends, and were both introduced to the world by the Ballets Russes, in 1913.

With his wild hair and frowning brow, French pianist François-Frédéric Guy bears more than a passing likeness to Ludwig van Beethoven, so it seemed entirely appropriate to be listening to a recital in which the Frenchman played three of the Old Radical’s most well-loved and well-known piano sonatas, nicknamed the ‘Pastoral’, the ‘Moonlight’ and the ‘Hammerklavier’.