Articles par Tom Hancox

It was in the 1790s, when Haydn came to England at the invitation of London-based impresario Johann Peter Salomon, that the twelve 'London' symphonies were composed. They were to be Haydn's last essays in the genre, examples in which, he said, he had to 'change many things for the English public'.

If this year's Delius anniversary glut – he was born in 1862 – has taught us anything, it is how difficult his music is to capture: beautifully idiosyncratic at best, but plain boring if wrong.

How do you solve a problem like Schoenberg? Sweetening the musical pill is a good start, and whilst neither the billed Brahms nor Beethoven received saccharine readings, the contrast between the angularity of the programmed modernism and the sheer beauty of these canonical works was all the more acute through their juxtaposition.

If he could, would Beethoven have chosen Mitsuko Uchida to première his final piano concerto? They certainly seem to inhabit the same creative plane, at once revelling in the innovative – nay, revolutionary – features, whilst enjoying the grand connections with their historical precedents too.

This was a programme torn strongly in opposite directions: on the one hand lay the superlative artistry of both flautist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Yefim Bronfman; on the other was the sheer unsuitability of the transcribed works – those by Schumann, Brahms, and Mozart.

Paul Dukas' success rests almost exclusively upon his symphonic scherzo L'apprenti sorcier ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice").

Those happy to brand the British Isles as the "land without music" for the time between Purcell and Britten might have cause to rethink if they audited the vintage of London of the late 1760s. Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of Johann Sebastian's sons, moved to England in 1765, helped along by the expatriated Carl Friedrich Abel, with whom he shared a house on Meard Street in Soho.

If the craft of the conductor has ever been a mystery to you – for it can certainly be a mystery to the orchestra – there couldn’t have been a finer explanation than this showcase concert.

Mitsuko Uchida's dress presented a challenge for the colour-blind eye, but she left no unanswered chromatic questions for the ear. From a dramatically exposed initial entry, through the poignant lyricism of the second movement, to the brilliance of the finale, Uchida's playing was marked by an intensity of thought, mastery of colour, and musical commitment.

A "riot of orchestral colour" was promised, but little of it was allowed to flourish.Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, written during the winter of 1900-01, is a portrait of a busy London, conjuring the hustle and bustle of everyday, metropolitan life.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra knew the difficulties they would face. Accordingly, they kept the proportions of this programme modest out of pragmatism rather than an expectation for encores, as richly deserved as they would have been.

Nothing quite made sense in this programme, but the confusion was impressive nonetheless. The opening, the UK première of Anders Hillborg's 'Cold Heat', was a prime example of post-minimalism: an eclectic assortment of styles, juxtaposed with consideration, but without much sense of unity for the work itself.

Criticism of Brahms' orchestration, so often concerned with supposedly clumsy couplings and other textural decisions, would have little to go on after a performance like this. The orchestral sound was lean, but never malnourished, exposing the frame without making it skeletal.

The programme read a little like a musical version of Kim's Game: not one but two full-scale symphonies, the same number of prefatory pieces, and then a piano concerto to boot: a test for the audience as well as the orchestra. The principal connexion between the works – apart from their contemporaneity – was the celebrated conductor, Serge Koussevitsky.

Christophe Rousset's Les Talens Lyriques, founded in 1991, is inextricably linked with the music of the French Baroque. Rousset cut his teeth in William Christie's similar outfit, Les Arts Florissants, before branching out to explore works off the beaten track of Charpentier, Couperin, et al.

An 'immense glow and sumptuousness' were the words that Richard Strauss, aged just twenty-four, chose to describe the sound at the première of his tone poem, Don Juan, in 1889. 122 years later another young conductor found similar qualities with his orchestra.

Mahler's Ninth Symphony – his last complete work in the genre – was written in 1908-9, against a backdrop of considerable personal tragedy and uncertainty.

The London Handel Players should be applauded for many things, from their characteristically warm and full sound through to their consistently thoughtful approach to how they play.

The programme notes suggested that Glinka was the father of Russian nationalism. Perhaps this is the case, but his overture to his second opera, Ruslan and Ludmilla, is undeniably an Italianate work, surely influenced by his meetings with Donizetti and Bellini in 1830.

Shostakovich's first and second piano concertos were coupled with Tchaikovsky's third symphony in the exciting continuation of the LSO's complete Tchaikovsky cycle, under their principal conductor, Valery Gergiev.The concerto for trumpet, piano, and strings (Op. 35) was written in 1933, with Shostakovich playing the piano part at its première in the same year.