Buscador de artículos | Julia Savage

The Philharmonia Orchestra's Paris: City of Light 1900–1950 reaches its climax, where Debussy and Messiaen combine for a radiant, dazzling programme. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard crowns an emotionally intense Turangalîla-symphonie.

Julia Savage reviews The Sound of Chaplin at the Barbican (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Timothy Brock). New and original scores accompanied screenings of four Chaplin films, adding extra comic value to these already funny farces. 

This celebration of Tavener's music showed the extraordinary depth and breadth of his compositions. 

The enthusiasm with which Laura Mvula had promoted her Late Night Prom on the radio, in the press and on Twitter in the preceding few days was tangible the minute she walked on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, resplendent in a black gown with silver embellishments. 

Steve Reich's 'opus number one', It's Gonna Rain, for magnetic tape, and The Desert Music for chamber ensemble and singers, came together for this Late Night Prom. Both pieces were almost hypnotic, and made for a very intense, but highly satisfying musical experience.

This Late Night Prom put together a Battle of the Bands between two groups of musicains to represent the bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Basie's and Ellington's bands never in fact battled it out in real life, so this showcased what might have been.

Prom 23 contained a mixed programme of McLeod, Beethoven and Mozart. Whilst each piece was enjoyable in its own right, and some truly outstanding musicianship was evident throughout the evening, the lack of connection between the pieces left a feeling of unsettledness.

The John Wilson Orchestra has rapidly established itself as a Proms highlight. Following on from a standout My Fair Lady in 2012, this year's Kiss Me, Kate showed the Orchestra at its very best, with an equally fabulous cast and crew.

For the first time in the Proms' history, the programme for the first of this season's Late Nights included the premiere of A Man from the Future, a groundbreaking new piece about codebreaker Alan Turing.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's current season is dedicated to performances of works for which its conductor, Charles Dutoit, has received critical acclaim in interpreting. This all-French programme of three very different works by Ravel, Berlioz and Saint-Saens continued the season in style.

This Southbank Centre concert of five of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's symphonies, alongside his Concerto in E flat for Harpsichord and Fortepiano showed just how much of a revolutionary this oft-overlooked composer was. The OAE were conducted by Rebecca Miller.

J S Bach's opus ultimum, the Mass in B Minor, was also the opus ultimum of the year-long Bach Unwrapped series at Kings Place. Unfortunately, it proved not to be the crowning glory it might have been.

Read our review of Mary Zimmerman's production of ­Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Gianni Quaranta's production of Verdi­'s Aida in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

To describe this revival of Puccini's much-loved Madam Butterfly as a visual spectacle would be to do it a disservice. Originally directed by Anthony Minghella in its first outing in 2005, it is one of ENO's greatest success stories.

A combination of Russian and English masterpieces formed the fourth concert of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 110th season. Three of the pieces were written and/or performed during the Second World War, whilst the remaining piece – Prokofiev’s magnificent Piano Concerto no.

The Last Night of the Proms provided a welcome tying-up of the various strands that have permeated this year’s season: British light music, the 60th anniversary of the Coronation, a host of premières and new BBC commissions, and the significant anniversaries of a number of composers (including the big-hitters of the season, Wagner and Britten).

In conversation with Petroc Trelawny at the fourth of the Proms Chamber Music concerts, the 25-year-old Norwegian trumpeter Tine Ting Helseth casually dismissed her ten-piece brass ensemble tenThing’s all-female set-up as “just a gimmick”.

Hot on the heels of this year’s Hollywood Rhapsody Prom came its less glamorous, perhaps geekier sibling, the Film Music Prom. There was less of the fanfare and opulence here; this was about the silver screen (and by that, I don’t mean the sort that is coming back into use for 3D films) and sci-fi.

Hot on the heels of the Urban Classic Prom came this, the BBC 6 Music Prom. Yet another first in this year’s Proms saw BBC Radios 3 and 6 Music bring together the likes of Cerys Matthews, Laura Marling, Xenakis, The Stranglers, Varèse and the London Sinfonietta, and produce a programme comprising styles that might loosely be described as “alternative”, from the fringes of pop to punk rock via mode

It is fair to say that urban and classical music would not normally share an audience, let alone a stage, but, in the first-ever Urban Classic Prom, rising and established stars of the urban music scene met and collaborated with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under dynamic young conductor (and arranger of some of the evening’s numbers) Jules Buckley, in a showcase of two very different musical culture

Prom 31 seems to have been loosely based around a royal theme, with two of several nods at this year’s Proms to the Coronation anniversary: explicitly, in the case of William Walton’s Orb and Sceptre march, which he wrote for the 1953 ceremony, and obliquely by way of Edmund Rubbra’s Ode to the Queen, which the BBC commissioned for the Coronation celebrations.

There was a noticeable difference in the audience who had come to this Prom from those who had attended the rather more serious Proms in the preceding week: colourful clothing. Gone were the sombre suits; in came casual summer dress in every imaginable colour under the sun.

In a week of intense and lengthy performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen, this Prom provided an antidote in the form of classical music inspired by or written for dance – after a purely instrumental first half, the second half of the concert brought dancers to the stage in a riveting, edge-of-seat intense combination of colour, rhythm and sound.

There was an element of scenic continuity between the lush greenery and positively balmy Holland Park evening surrounding us, and the staging of Opera Holland Park’s production of L’elisir d’amore: in the background, a large greenhouse full of the brightest sunflowers; in the foreground, sunflowers dotted about the stage, and the back ends of two lorries plastered with a large image of a field of

The newly built and unconventionally imposing Coventry Cathedral, built next to the ruins of the original medieval building destroyed in the Second World War, played host to the first performance of Britten’s War Requiem in 1962.

The decision to appoint the Early Opera Company and Scanner as this year’s associate artists says much about Spitalfields Music Summer Festival, an eclectic cornucopia of classical and non-classical music concerts by professional and amateur artists, bespoke tours, and family activities.

The world-renowned viol player Jordi Savall is known for pushing the boundaries; he seems keen not to typecast the viol as a period instrument, but rather to step outside the world of Baroque music and historical performance practice and show the viol’s worth in other genres.

The 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s Coronation has prompted much festivity and reminiscence. To be on the throne for such a long time is a remarkable achievement, and to be almost as active as ever in carrying out royal duties 60 years on even more so; events such as the service of celebration at Westminster Abbey, and the many Coronation-related television and radio broadcasts, have provided an

The title reflecting a countertenor aria from Henry Purcell’s Ode to St Cecilia, “’tis Nature’s Voice” was the overall theme of this year’s Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, which drew to a spectacular close on Saturday.

I must admit that Bach through Brass, as this concert was entitled, filled me with a certain amount of trepidation. Bach, on instruments for which the music in the programme was not designed, on instruments which were not even around in Bach’s time (at least not in their modern-day form), did not sound immediately appealing; nevertheless, something drew me in, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival has a number of strands of thought permeating its concerts. It explores the effects of war, sex and sexuality, politics, and race on some of the 20th century’s most important musical output.

What to do with a “classic revival” that has, in the main, met the critics’ eye of approval? That was the question facing Natascha Metherell, the revival director of ENO’s production of La bohème, which opened this week at the Coliseum. The revival was in fact deftly handled: a production which remained faithful to Miller’s original vision, with honest, rather than over-egged, sentimentality.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, goes the familiar phrase, and that can be applied in life to any number of things, including music. Were the father of harmony, Johann Sebastian Bach, still alive today, he would be beyond flattered.

Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s contribution to the Britten 100 celebrations, was supposed to have been conducted by Sir Colin Davis; it was instead dedicated to his memory following his death last Sunday.

The centenary of Britten’s birth has seen a surge in performances of his music both in the concert hall and on the stages of many a noted opera house. Sensationalised biographies, radio and television programmes, and a number of Britten-centred festivals have helped to pique further interest in a composer whose music tends to attract a love-hate relationship with its listeners.

In a quiet backstreet just a couple of minutes’ walk from South Kensington underground station stands the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni. It is one branch of a global network that exists to promote cross-cultural dialogue and to showcase the best of French culture, be that through food, media, or music.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s residency at the Barbican has been a huge success. Rather than churn out time-honoured family favourite pieces of classical music, the orchestra has seized the opportunity to showcase its prowess in the performance of new music – three European premières including John Adams’ powerful passion-oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary, as well as Claud

The Barbican has scored itself something of a winner in securing the Los Angeles Philarmonic Orchestra to fulfil its International Associate Residency.

In its sixth season, the Zurich International Concert Series has attracted some well-known, but less-heard orchestral names to London. The series enables the full force of orchestras to be heard in the relatively intimate space of Cadogan Hall, which is otherwise famous for attracting chamber ensembles of the highest calibre.

Despite a relatively easy-to-follow storyline, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro is an opera that is hard to pull off entirely successfully. Musically, it requires enormous vigour from both cast and orchestra; dramatically, this opera buffa demands strong acting skills in order to eke out its moments of farce.

When going to see a new production at ENO, always expect the unexpected. In ENO’s recent history, that has certainly been true, though not always to its credit. Friday’s opening performance of Charpentier’s Medea was no exception to the rule; however, in this case, it was an opulent, stylish and fabulous (in more than one sense) production, complemented by a truly spectacular cast.

As London became a vision in white and all went quiet, the Southbank Centre was abuzz with all manner of arts-related activities. One rail replacement bus and a brisk walk behind me, I had made it to see the Philharmonia Orchestra’s matinee concert of 20th-century English music, framed around John Ireland’s Piano Concerto.

The King’s Singers epitomise a cappella musicianship. The group was originally formed in the 1960s by choral scholars of King’s College, Cambridge (and one from Christ Church, Oxford), but its current membership includes members who were previously choral scholars at Oxford, and even one member from New Zealand.

Handel’s Belshazzar was the oratorio of choice for renowned music group Les Arts Florissants at the Barbican last week. The group was famously set up in France in 1979 by the American-born William Christie, eventually becoming an international household name for its critically acclaimed performances and recordings of Baroque operas on period instruments.

The programme for this concert – entitled “The Day of Thy Power” – comprised Robert Fayrfax’s Missa Tecum principium, and Tallis’ Lamentations I and II. In both Fayrfax’s and Tallis’ time, there was great political, social and religious unrest and change; the arrival of the Tudors and the actions of each successive heir to the throne brought tumult to England and beyond.

Handel’s Jephtha is an oratorio, rather than an opera. However, the story is one of high drama and emotion, and thus the work lends itself easily to operatic adaptation.

Three years ago, John Berry, ENO’s Artistic Director, invited acclaimed theatre director Rufus Norris to reinvent Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Unfortunately, it was not much of a success, and was panned by critics. This year, the production has returned to ENO, with some changes, albeit none that are particularly remarkable. ENO’s publicity machine has, this time round, gone on an advertising offensive.

The King’s Head Theatre in Islington is, as one might suspect from the name, in the back of a pub. Founded in 1970, it was the first pub theatre to open in London since Shakespeare’s time. Housed in a back room that used to contain a boxing ring, it is tiny: tightly packed seating for maybe 60 or 70 people and an unelevated stage, beginning where the seating stops.

As I took my seat at Saturday’s concert by the Nash Ensemble, one in a series entitled “Dreamers of Dreams” put on as part of their residency at the Wigmore Hall, I wondered what I was about to let myself in for.