En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | London Sinfonietta

Lors du sixième concert du Festival Présences, le London Sinfonietta a interprété avec assurance et sensibilité un programme varié, construit autour de l’amitié entre les compositeurs George Benjamin et Oliver Knussen.

Il est des expériences dont on ne mesure le bénéfice qu’après en avoir éprouvé les difficultés au travers d’une pénitence ascétique. Au contraire, il en est d’autres qui procurent d’emblée l’extase de la révélation. Telle fut la première britannique de Speicher du compositeur allemand Enno Poppe.

Les concerts de musique d’avant-garde sont réputés difficiles. Pourtant, le concert donné à l’occasion du 90e anniversaire de Pierre Boulez s’est déroulé devant une salle pleine, ou presque, d’un public manifestement enthousiaste.

An evening of thrilling choreography and seamless synergy between dance and music, as Sasha Waltz & Guests and the London Sinfonietta bring Terry Riley’s legendary In C to life.

The London Sinfonietta blends premieres and poetry in a confusing evening at the Southbank Centre. 

Musical cross-pollination came to life in London Sinfonietta’s electrifying performance, in a seamless blend of theatre, history and virtuosic playing.

Engaging performances, including two world premieres, are served up by one of Kings Place's partners in the ‘Scotland Unwrapped’ season. 

Beckett’s theatrical precision and Feldman’s fragile soundscapes cross paths at the Southbank Centre, creating a fleeting beauty in a profound artistic dialogue. 

At the Southbank Centre vivid performance of seminal works shows how Schoenberg added colours to the Chameleon and enriched our sound world. 

Superlative performances of two Galina Ustvolskaya's symphonies at the Southbank Centre show it is time that the composer be included in the pantheon of the post-war avant-garde.

Inside Queen Elizabeth Hall, a centenary celebration of György Ligeti unfolds – a mesmerising blend of rhythmic exuberance and eerie textures, alongside pieces by Conlon Nancarrow and Unsuk Chin.

The London Sinfonietta and Martyn Brabbins pay tribute to Sir Harrison Birtwistle with a programme of very fine music-making at London's Southbank Centre.

The Greek composer's centenary is marked by the London Sinfonietta, Colin Currie Group and the JACK Quartet. 

A top notch ensemble brings Coult’s first opera luminously to life at the Buxton International Festival, finding renewed relevance in the post-pandemic era.

Stalwarts of American minimalism meet British Proms premieres as the London Sinfonietta checks the nation’s pulse

Almost 30 years since its last run, Gerald Barry’s The Intelligence Park makes a boisterous return to the stage. 

The evening left you in no doubt that in Donnerstag aus Licht is more approachable than many would imagine, as well as being a major creative achievement that is crying out to be explored by opera houses.

Exemplary performances of classic works by the American minimalist from the London Sinfonietta 

Two world premieres from Mark Bowden and Colin Matthews breath life into the Southbank's Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Elizabeth Atherton sang with a keening intensity, and gave a voice to every grieving mother and child.

A programme of new music and 20th-century classics reflects on loss, war, inhumanity and redemption. 

Experiments in music and ideas brought together by the London Sinfonietta and guests at a special concert all about space and time.

A celebration of fifty years of the London Sinfonietta was a well-deserved pat on the back for this valuable institution.

Fantastic performances can't quite elevate a disconnected audio-visual experience

Two short works by Harrison Birtwistle put forward interesting views of classical themes: the psychologically involved The Corridor and a dynamic new vision of Medea, The Cure. 

“the moon has set... I lie alone.” A deeply absorbing new production to the music of Georg Friedrich Haas in the Linbury Studio.

Italian composer Fausto Romitelli’s beguiling operatic swansong is given a virtuoso performance by the London Sinfonietta.

Detailed, transparent readings from the London Sinfonietta brought out the modernist in early Schoenberg, but passion and atmosphere were lacking.

Sian Edwards leads a powerful exploration of Max’s chamber works at Cadogan Hall, with extraordinary solo turns from Tim Gill and Rebecca Bottone.

The London première of Georg Friedrich Haas' cult phenomenon in vain was given as part of Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival, by London Sinfonietta and conductor Emilio Pomàrico – a rhetorically brilliant performance.

Karlheinz Stockhausen has done rather well out of this weekend’s instalment of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival, with his music featuring in all three of the concerts as well as the mouthwatering additional event “Breakfast with Stockhausen”.

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’s all about puppets at the moment, from War Horse to Madama Butterfly – even Studio Ghibli’s complicated cult film Princess Mononoke has had the puppet treatment – and the latest musical project to do the string thing, so to speak, is from the London Sinfonietta.

How strange. I was engrossed throughout the London Sinfonietta’s performance of Mauricio Kagel’s The Pieces of the Compass Rose last night, and I have no idea how to describe it. Each of the eight pieces in this remarkable cycle for “salon band” is titled after a point on the compass – and each is, essentially, an evocation of that point. Or perhaps I mean “direction”, or “place”.

This Wednesday, London Sinfonietta presented Luke Bedford: In Portrait – a concert with a format that seemed almost too good to be true. In a short programme combining Luke Bedford’s Wonderful No-Headed Nightingale (2011–12), Renewal (2012–13) and Gérard Grisey’s Périodes (1974), conductor Sian Edwards and the London Sinfonietta beckoned us into a world of shifting soundscapes.

Venturing into the Paris of the 1910s and 1920s, the Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival continues its journey through a brambly thicket of 20th-century music. Sunday’s programme focused on the output of Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer who famously engendered riotous uproar at the Paris Opera House in 1913 with his savage ballet Le sacre du printemps.

The works of Anton Webern – famously described by Stravinksy as “dazzling diamonds” – have been “unwrapped” as part of The Rest is Noise festival this month. This was a timely project, as the output of this Second Viennese School composer has often been misrepresented due to its considerable (and problematic) impact on 20th- and 21st-century music.

Anyone who worries for the health of contemporary composition obviously wasn’t at the Southbank Centre this Sunday, where the London Sinfonietta presented a whole afternoon and evening’s worth of new music in and around the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

There was a strong focus on Danish composers at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; works by the young and audacious Simon Steen-Andersen featured in several concerts, whilst the Arditti Quartet’s performance of Hans Abrahamsen’s Fourth Quartet proved to be the highlight of the opening weekend.

Kings Place is my new favourite London arts venue. It is the venue of choice for several prominent ensembles, and it is easy to see why. Acoustically fantastic concert halls provide opportunities for all sorts of music in a formal concert setting, whilst the large open spaces allow for more relaxed performances, where the audience can buy drinks, sit down and listen (or not).

When Stravinsky brought his radical ballet Petrushka to Vienna in 1912, the composer recounts in his autobiography, the orchestra was full of complaints about the demands of the score. Disillusioned by this, Stravinsky found comfort from the unlikely figure of the man who raised and lowered the stage curtains. “Don’t let’s be downhearted”, he said, “I’ve been here for 55 years...

To judge by the continued chatter, no-one noticed 100 metronomes on stage being set in motion, signalling the beginning of György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique (1962). Even when the lights were dimmed it only dawned on people slowly that the concert had actually already begun.

During the first half of this London Sinfonietta concert, I scribbled the phrase 'Lightly anarchic streak' in my notes, referring to the formal daring and the conspicuous rock music influence evident in various pieces.

The work of Sir Harrison Birtwistle isn't necessarily the sunniest music in the world, and coming into the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night for a serious-minded evening of discussion and performances of his intricate, modernist-style music by the London Sinfonietta, I confess to having felt a little reluctant to be leaving behind the sweltering heat of the South Bank.

Having missed a chance to hear Conlon Nancarrow’s Player Piano Study no. 21 (Canon X) due to a spontaneous programme switch earlier in the day, I was delighted that Dominic Murcott’s arrangement of the piece for London Sinfonietta and player piano opened this concert.

There can't have been too many concerts ever which have started with a setting of Gertrude Stein and ended with an extra-camp version of 'Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead'. The London Sinfonietta certainly broke a barrier or two on Saturday night, that's for sure.

It’s quite rare nowadays to rock up to a concert having absolutely no prior knowledge of the music you’re about to hear. Ticket prices, an abundance of established concert repertoire, and an understandable reflex to ‘play it safe’ all contribute to our penchant for the known in the concert hall.

Maverick improviser Matthew Bourne and London Sinfonietta’s reliable principal players created an extraordinary concert in this second of the Sinfonietta’s Written/UnWritten series.

The gentle sound of a kettle coming to the boil was the intriguing start to the UK premiere of Louis Andriessen’s work for singer, ensemble and film, Anaïs Nin. The peeling and eating of a banana gave rather more of a clue as to what was to come, in a concert that carried the warning “This concert contains explicit content and language and is recommended for ages 16 and over”.

Beat Furrer is one of the biggest names in the European avant garde, honoured in this London Sinfonietta tribute. Furrer founded Klangforum Wien 25 years ago and is a charismatic conductor, so it was good to hear how the London Sinfonietta responded to him.Highlight of the programme was Nuun (1995-6) almost a classic by contemporary music standards.