Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Cheltenham

Well-honed performances from the CBSO under Andrew Gourlay are enjoyed by a packed Town Hall on the opening night of the festival.  

The Gould Piano Trio's Cheltenham Music Festival matinee proves the restorative power of chamber music in this spa venue of Regency refinement. 

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is reunited with its former Chief Conductor for an all-Russian evening in Cheltenham Town Hall as the festival opens its 77th season.

Parisian choral works by Fauré, Dupré and Duruflé performed by candle (and electric) light in Cheltenham College Chapel.

Callum Smart, playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1 in G minor, and conductor Matthew Halls made very successful debuts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at a packed Cheltenham Town Hall.

Boris Giltburg was one of the must-see performers of this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival, having won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition for pianists back in June. The hall at the Pittville Pump Room was packed full of anticipation for this renowned pianist.

Michelangelo is an iconic figure of the High Renaissance, whose profound – and possibly unparalleled – impact upon western art continues to resonate down the ages. Together with Leonardo, he epitomises the “Renaissance Man”, more a concept representing a creative ideal than a mere colloquialism for “polymath”.

The sun is out and the musical migration has begun. Many metropolis music venues decide practically to shut up shop for the summer, and the concert junkie needs to uproot and search out top classical music at one of the summer festivals that spring up seasonally.

This double-bill concert was a fantastic success at Cheltenham’s Town Hall. It had been moved from the main stage to a smaller side-room, but rather than this being to the detriment of the performance, this enhanced it. The performers were up close, which created a personal recital in an intimate setting.

Red, white and blue bunting, with matching lighting, adorned the balconies of Cheltenham Town Hall, setting a patriotic scene for a concert of music from the year that World War I ended. Television presenter Julia Somerville opened the evening sat at a vintage newsdesk with her own careful research, for which she can be highly commended.

The concert opened with BBC newsreader Julia Somerville, summarising news from the year 1915 at an old-fashioned broadcasting desk complete with microphone. It was informative, and set the scene for this recital, one in a series of ‘time capsule’ concerts, solely featuring music composed in 1915 – including two of Debussy’s last chamber pieces.

This Cheltenham Festival concert featured three British string quartets by Hugh Wood, Michael Nyman and Giles Swayne. Swayne and Wood were both present at the concert and gave an introductory talk providing context for their works. Swayne said in the talk that ‘music should be unpredictable to keep the listener interested’.

To perform so many of Debussy’s works in one sitting requires a certain amount of skill and understanding. The charismatic pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet opened our eyes to the impressionistic world of Claude Debussy in this special three-part concert for the Cheltenham Music Festival.

In most concert listings, premières seem to be thrown in as a one-off to offset a relatively risk-free billing. In this Cheltenham Music Festival concert, this was not the case. With no less than five premières in an evening of seven choral works, those present could be assured that they were hearing something new.