Tableaux vivants with notes inégales at Kings Place

I love eating out, yet I hate cooking programmes. It is perhaps for the same reason that I’m suspicious of ‘Music and Conversation’ events. Whilst interested in the process and the thoughts of composers, I’d rather these were presented on their own without feeling that the ‘conversation’ part of the concert explains the ‘performance’ part.

I was fortunate to see Wayne McGregor’s choreography set on the San Francisco Ballet several years back, so I was eager to see Random Works, which was performed this past weekend in Kings Place’s Hall One. Random Works wasn’t McGregor’s choreography, but rather the work of ten young choreographers. McGregor is listed as the programme’s curator.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, goes the familiar phrase, and that can be applied in life to any number of things, including music. Were the father of harmony, Johann Sebastian Bach, still alive today, he would be beyond flattered.

Guest conductor Harry Bicket brings a sense of urgency to Mozart's Requiem and pulse-quickening energy to Symphony no. 40.

Guest conductor Riccardo Minasi leads the West Australian Symphony Orchestra with a program of old favourites, with outstanding contribution from trumpeter Jenna Smith

Can one be artful and musical while playing at maximum volume? In a program of López, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, Rafael Payare and the Pittsburgh Symphony answer a resounding yes.