Work: The Tale of Tsar Saltan

Dmitri Tcherniakov's staging turns Rimsky-Korsakov's opera into storytelling for an autistic boy, but does he deliver a fairy tale ending? 

Everyone tells me that Russians play Russian music better than anyone else, but no-one seems to be able to put their fingers on the mysterious quality of Russianness Russians are meant to produce when playing Russian.

“From Russia with love” might have been an apt title for this evening’s performance from the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra on the Irish leg of their tour, for this was a concert designed to showcase all that is best in Russian music both in interpretation and in composition.