Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | MacMillan

What is the link between Bernstein’s criticism of American consumerism and MacMillan's biblical tale?

Royal Northern Sinfonia’s performance of Sir James Macmillan’s St Luke Passion had moments of high drama, but one crucial element of the piece was mostly missing. 

The Philadelphia Orchestra's Winter Festival celebrates the British Isles. 

The Scottish Ensemble is joined by I Fagiolini in a Winter Chorale linking ancient and modern music for Advent and Christmas. 

Following some rhythmically challenged Ginastera, Horia Andreescu and the Russian National Orchestra impress with confidently played MacMillan and Tchaikovsky.

An underwhelming performance that fell prey to poor interpretive judgements. 

Leonard Elschenbroich joined with the 12 ensemble for an evening dedicated to the Suite italienne, a stroll through time though with a focus on contemporary composers.

MacMillan’s Stabat Mater receives its Scottish première with The Sixteen and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Harry Christophers.

BBCSSO and Richard Farnes’s special chemistry in a night of British music. Thoughtful Butterworth and noble Elgar and  Lawrence Power joined the forces for a wonderfully spirited performance of Macmillan’s Viola Concerto.

Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with pieces by Tavener, MacMillan and Lauridsen contrast with Byrd and Dowland in a thoughtful and moving performance of Christmas musical icons from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus.

Britten Sinfonia and Voices directed by Eamonn Dougan courageously plumb the depths of humanity’s despair in music ancient and modern

The heady combination of the Scottish première of James MacMillan’s Little Mass, Nicola Benedetti playing Szymanowski 2 and the drama of Berlioz Symphonie fantistique was an evening to remember.

Love and Passion provide a vibrant theme for an enterprising choral concert given by the Choir of Royal Holloway. 

Première of MacMillan’s Fourth Symphony is the highlight of BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s second Proms outing.

Is Allegri's Miserere really the most famous choral work of all time? Harry Christophers and the Sixteen offer a significantly altered version of this work, in a programme otherwise devoted to the religious music of Palestrina and Macmillan.

Madrigals and Folksongs: the King's Singers entertain and delight in a progromme spanning 400 years with glorious singing. 

James MacMillan has honed his first opera Inés de Castro into an unmissable evening:  unspeakably gory but utterly thrilling.

Colin Currie played with passion and verve, but James MacMillan's new Percussion Concerto was a disappointment.

As part of the Muziekgebouw’s 2014 Choral Series, renowned chamber choir The Sixteen gave a passionate, committed performance of music by Palestrina, Allegri, and modern composer James MacMillan. 

Innovative programming from Manfred Honeck mingles readings, music, and chant in memory of Mozart.

The Edinburgh Quartet conclude their excellent mini-series of Late Session concerts at Edinburgh's 'Summerhall' featuring the music of James MacMillan.

James MacMillan’s The Death of Oscar receives its American première under Stéphane Denève, while Paul Lewis is the soloist in a thought-provoking account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3.

There is always something special when a piece is performed in the presence of a composer, and even more so when the composer conducts a famous and popular work. James MacMillan conducted the BBCSSO in The Confession of Isobel Gowdie to help celebrate Commonwealth Day in Glasgow. 

The Edinburgh Quartet in the second of a series of three explorations of James MacMillan's string quartet writing at Edinburgh's Summerhall.

An astonishing performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony followed the world première of James MacMillan's Viola Concerto, a haunting mixture of the old and the new. Soloist Lawrence Power joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski.

James MacMillan conducted two rediscovered early orchestral works for the first time with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at City Hall, Glasgow.

As part of the last full weekend of Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival, Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra presented a programme of British orchestral music from the 1990s.

With composer James MacMillan in attendance, this Edinburgh Quartet concert confirmed that the group has audience attraction and engagement at its core.

If there were a Nobel Prize for violin, I would nominate James Ehnes. His playing of Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Toronto Symphony was drenched with emotions – pathos, irony, lamentation, sarcasm, tenderness and bliss – displayed and at the same time bounded by the discipline of his virtuosity, that like a diamond, radiated brilliance without attracting attention to itself.

José Mateo Ballet Theatre opens its 28th season with Shadows Fleeting. Performed in the company’s Sanctuary Theatre, the stunningly converted Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square, the program showcases selections of founder and artistic director José Mateo’s last decade of work, including two company classics and the première of his newest ballet, Vanished Verses.

The adjective in the title of Britten’s 1934 Simple Symphony could refer to the ease with which listeners can spot each movement’s two contrasting themes. Attentive, lively use of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, colour enabled Peter Oundjian and the RSNO to make the most of young Britten’s diversity within impressive compositional unity.

The BBC Proms 2013 began with some of the best of English composers. Tonight for Prom 28 it was the turn of some of Scotland’s finest, as Donald Runnicles conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a performance of James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto. There were plenty of old favourites from Beethoven and Strauss Jr.

It’s a slightly topsy-turvy world when a Shostakovich symphony lightens the mood and sends you home grinning, and when a work by Mahler is a filler rather than the main event.

The programme notes for The Sixteen’s 2013 Choral Pilgrimage draw attention to how composers have been inspired by the grandeur and beauty of their places of worship and work. In this context, the setting for The Sixteen’s concert in Oxford was more than suitable. Completed in 1200, Christ Church Cathedral is a mixture of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.

“Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from talking. This evening’s program will be presented without intermission or breaks for applause. It is our hope that this structure will assist in providing a meaningful experience...

Conductor H.K. Gruber’s visits to the BBC Philharmonic are guaranteed to be unmissable concerts of the season; with unquenchable enthusiasm and pride in the music he programmes, Gruber, (known affectionately to all as “Nali”), always assures a stirring performance.

Choral concerts often have programmes that read like compilation CDs. I don’t mean this negatively: there are countless reasons why a greater number of contrasting pieces is required – timbral, textual, temporal, contextual, historical, and so on.

In James MacMillan’s Clemency, three strangers visit Abraham and Sarah. The aging couple make them welcome and receive the news that Sarah will bear a son – to Sarah’s disbelief. They appear to be angels, coming to bless the couple. But as the travelers prepare to leave, they reveal that their next stop is one of condemnation.

Written for oboist Nicholas Daniel and first performed in Birmingham in 2010, there was excitement and anticipation in Perth for James MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto receiving its Scottish première.The Scottish Chamber Orchestra with soloist François Leleux gave a virtuosic performance of this thought-provoking work, conducted by Thierry Fischer.

From the altar of their customary home in Edinburgh’s 1691 Canongate Kirk, Calton Consort presented an a cappella concert enigmatically entitled “Translated Daughters”. The enigma dissolved upon hearing W.H. Auden’s text for Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia. It features the arresting couplet: “Translated Daughter, come down and startle / Composing mortals with immortal fire.

Pleasantly enough, Britten Sinfonia went down a thoroughly unconventional route in celebrating their 20th birthday at the Barbican on Saturday, with a brilliantly varied range of new pieces mixing with chamber orchestra classics.

The Kings Place programme booklet for Since it was the Day of Preparation… folds like a thin papery triptych. Yet, the composer’s photograph does not occupy the central panel. Indeed, gushing verbal bombast, a feature all too common in performances of new music, was pleasantly absent.

The position of Composer in Residence at the Grafenegg festival may as well be called Composer-Conductor in Residence, as the appointments of Tan Dun, HK Gruber, and now James MacMillan have established a tradition whereby the lucky candidates are not only required to be intimately involved with the programming and preparation of their music, but also to stand in front of an orchestra and lead the

In the spare modern elegance of Hall One at Kings Place, choral octet Platinum Consort, under the direction of their founder and conductor Scott Inglis-Kidger, gave an impressive and impeccably presented performance of works from their critically acclaimed recording In the Dark, written for, or inspired by, the Tenebrae tradition.

At one extreme of musical preparation, early music specialists rely on research to ensure authentic performance of music by composers long dead. At the other, composers writing today might well be acquainted with the performers and consult them on the technical possibility of some passages and attend rehearsals.

I would say a little over three quarters of the seats in the Royal Albert Hall were full for Prom 33, featuring Juanjo Mena, the BBC Philharmonic and several northern choirs, and that whilst I’ve seen the arena busier than it was, it was still fairly tightly packed.

The Sixteen’s three appearances in the line-up for this year’s Spitalfields Music Festival showcase the breadth of their repertoire. On June 15 and 16, they will premiere Alan Roth’s new musical setting of Beckett monologues, Old Earth. First, on June 9, was something altogether more familiar.

In this, the last of his farewell programmes, Stéphane Denève bade au revoir to Edinburgh in front of an audience of the great and the good, containing ambassadors, diplomats and ministers as well as all his Edinburgh fans. There were speeches, presentations and more than a touch of the Hollywood Academy Awards Ceremony. “But what about the music?” I hear you ask.

James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto was first performed in 2010, but this afternoon, at the Dutch premiere, was the first time he conducted it. It’s quite an extraordinary piece, so full of ideas that you might wonder if he couldn’t have written two concertos instead of just the one. But when it comes to MacMillan, this potential overload of ideas actually works really well.

Composers have a long tradition of incorporating folk tunes into their music, and this evening’s concert by the National Youth Orchestra, with support from members of the folk group Bellowhead, really proved the point that musical genres are not separate boxes, but just points on a continuum, with no fixed boundaries.