Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle at the top of their game in Diamonds. A smoking performance from Sara Mearns in Slaughter on 10th Avenue. Strong debuts from Emma Von Enck and Taylor Stanley and a memorable classical turn by Aaron Sanz in the Barber.
Cristian Măcelaru and the Hallé give exemplary accounts of Fauré's Dolly Suite and Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, whilst Mozart's “Jeunehomme” Concerto with soloist Heejae Kim is variable and lacks instrumetal balance.
To open the new season, the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot were joined by star mezzo Joyce DiDonato, whose performance sent listeners over the top and over the rainbow.
The BBC Concert Orchestra and Keith Lockhart offered a snapshot of the Bard's lasting artistic impact with music for composed for stage and screen, from this side of the Atlantic and beyond the pond.
She made cynics swoon and skeptics burst: Jessye Norman, along with pianist Mark Markham, serenaded eager listeners with love songs from the Great American Songbook and 20th-century France.
Birmingham Royal Ballet's Three of a Kind is an evening of atypical works including Card Games By John Cranko, George Balanchine's Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and Kenneth MacMillan's Elite Syncopations. At Birmingham Hippodrome.
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).
The Lyric Opera ends their 2013–14 season with a run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, in all its frothy, proto-American, miked glory. Pluck is in evidence throughout.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra really has the perfect Wagner sound. Their full, vibrant string tone and magnificent pealing brass were fully in evidence in a thrilling rendition of the concert version of the overture from Tannhäuser.
While musicals are normally outside the purview of major symphony orchestras, fans of Rodgers and Hammerstein can only be grateful for the New York Philharmonic’s beautiful staging of Carousel, currently onstage at Avery Fisher Hall.
The Last Night of the Proms isn’t really a concert at all; it’s two very different concerts put on one after the other. The first is something like what we’re used to from a Prom, with big-name soloists performing alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus in world premières and classic works from the repertoire.
On entering Door One at the Royal Albert Hall and seeing top hats, tails and tap shoes clustered in a doorway, it was time to prepare for an evening of ‘The Broadway Sound’.
Since their staging of Show Boat two decades ago, Opera North have frequently dipped into the world of the musical and the operetta, breathing new life into some of our favourite shows.
