Potential and polish: the finals of the Mirjam Helin Competition

By Hugo Shirley, 31 May 2019

Loading, please wait...

Reviewed at Music Centre / Musiikkitalo: Concert Hall, Helsinki on 29 May 2019

A special relationship renewed: Leonard Slatkin returns to Prague

Frank Kuznik, 16th April

Leonard Slatkin returns to the Prague Symphony Orchestra with one of his own pieces, a Schubert tribute that steals the show.

****1

Cummings and the AAM win ‘Leipzig's Got Talent’

Nick Boston, 16th April

The Academy of Ancient Music poses the question what might have been in Leipzig with stunning performances of Bach and his competitors to be the new Thomaskantor.

*****

Dependable Mozart and Mendelssohn from the RLPO

Glyn Mon Hughes, 16th April

Aurel Dawidziuk and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra explore darkness and light, although the drama does not always bringing the audience to the edge of its collective seat.

***11

Pappano and the LSO: a thrilling collision between heaven and hell

Charlotte Gardner, 16th April

Vilde Frang joins Sir Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican for transcendent Korngold alongside darker fare.

****1

Tarmo Peltokoski conducts the Hallé in Mahler and Vaughan Williams

Leighton Jones, 16th April

Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder provide an apt, if somewhat unexpected, partner to Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.

****1

Carlo Rizzi brings Respighi’s Rome to Birmingham

Robert Gainer, 15th April

Carlos Rizzi believes that Puccini’s orchestrations are good enough to stand alone, without their vocal lines, but can the drama compete with the romance of Respighi?

****1

More reviews...

Hugo Shirley

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist. He has written widely as a critic in the UK, including for The Spectator, the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, and has held editorial posts at both Opera and Gramophone. He was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015) and has a PhD in musicology from King's College London, where his thesis focused on Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Potential and polish: mixed results at the finals of the Mirjam Helin Competition