Intermezzo

2013-14 seasons for London's big three orchestras revealed

London's biggest orchestras have now all released details of their 2013-14 seasons.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra listing is here.  The remainder of their The Rest is Noise series is unfortunately no more adventurous than the first. But there some worthwhile concerts tucked away in there, the main highlight being Peter Grimes on 28 September with Stuart Skelton in the title role.

The Philharmonia listing is here. The dates announced so far oddly include very few for principal conductor Esa Pekka Salonen. One of his rare appearances will be La damnation de Faust, which kicks off the season on 26 September, with Gerald Finley as Méphistophélès.

The LSO season listing, mentioned in an earlier post, can be downloaded here.

None of the listings mention booking dates, but I suspect only the operas will cause any serious jostling for tickets. As for the rest, based on recent experience it may be worth gambling on discounts appearing later.

Southbank Centre 2012 - 2013 season revealed

Well, part of it anyway. The Shell Classic International series, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia and OAE details are up.

Highlights are fewer than hoped, but Zurich Opera's Der fliegende Holländer, conducted by Alain Altinoglu and starring Bryn Terfel, is among them.  There's a lot of Strauss too, including the LPO's  final scene of Salome with Karita Mattila and Thomas Hampson.  Anna Caterina Antonacci joins the OAE in a programme that includes excerpts from Les Troyens and rarely-heard Gluck. 

Visiting orchestras are few, presumably for budget reasons, but there's an interesting Brahms/Schoenberg programme from Michael Tilson Thomas and the Vienna Philharmonic, and Ivan Fischer returns with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and some Bartok. Predicatably, there's almost no contemporary music; the LPO's cannily branded 'The Rest is Noise' season, like the book, concentrates on familiar favourites from the first half of the last century.

On sale dates are:
Shell Classic International - Members booking 25 January, General booking 14 Feb
LPO, OAE and Philharmonia - Members 2 February, General 14 Feb

Chamber Music and Piano details have yet to be revealed - the booking dates are Members 28 February and General 6 March.

Renee Fleming lands in London

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Christoph Eschenbach / Renee Fleming - Royal Festival Hall, 14 December 2011

Dr Evil and the Halloween Fairy

In a scary gown that looked like it was knocked up by Gok Wan from a pumpkin and a mile of mosquito netting, Renee Fleming made a brief visit to London last night to despatch Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder with the LPO and her old mate Christoph Eschenbach. 

Hitching up her curtainaceous skirts to avoid smothering the cello section en route to the podium, she revealed not just a shapely ankle but - steel yourselves - matching tights beneath her high heeled black sandals.  Anna Wintour may have spent 25 years in America but clearly her mission is not yet over.  

Brewer droops

LPO / Vladimir Jurowski / Christine Brewer - Royal Festival Hall, 4 May 2011

Vladimir Jurowski has of late turned away from the fascinating but crowd-repelling obscurities which peppered previous seasons' programmes. His reward last night was a near-capacity crowd for an evening of familiar comforts, crowned with Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Jurowski's customary asceticism cut straight through the syrup and sentiment - this was Tchaikovsky at his most fleet and muscular, crafted with an airy transparency and acute attention to detail.

Mahlerization

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski / Alexander Markovich / Melanie Diener / Thomas Hampson - Royal Festival Hall,  26 January 2010

At this stage in the anniversary celebrations, I'm all for a few bars rest from Mahler wherever possible. But it seems there is no escape, even when he's not on the menu. As Vladimir Jurowski explained during a brief furniture-reshuffling break, this Mahler-free programme should be considered as contextualisation for the LPO's next concert (centrepiece: Das klagende Lied). Nice sales pitch Vlad, maybe it won over some of the fidgety teenagers padding out the stalls.  

one night, two Mahlers

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Nicholas Angelich - Royal Festival Hall; 
'Night Shift' - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment  / Vladimir Jurowski - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 19 January 2011

It's not often you get the chance to fit in two concerts on one night. Thanks to the LPO's 20 minute overrun I almost didn't. Luckily the OAE are equally tardy types, so I was able to hotfoot it from Mahler 5 in the Royal Festival Hall to Todtenfeier next door with seconds to spare.

you sang something?

Soile Isokoski / Allison Bell / Members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski - Wigmore Hall, 10 June 2010

What a pity that the typically intelligent and stimulating programme Vladimir Jurowski had devised for his LPO chamber ensemble this evening wasn't matched by equally thoughtful planning for its execution.

The most effective item was the least ambitious, and perhaps not coincidentally the only one Jurowski didn't conduct. The Sextet from Strauss's Capriccio was played with great warmth and vitality by six of the LPO's top string players. 

A few more musicians had to squeeze on to the tiny Wigmore platform for Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and it was here that the problems began. Soloist Allison Bell, instead of standing up front, joined them in a line curving behind the conductor.

In other venues, or perhaps with a more forceful vocalist, this would have been a perfectly uncontroversial arrangement. But one of the reasons the Wigmore is such an ideal recital venue is that the acoustics favour the typical position of the singer at the front of the platform, creating a perfect balance automatically.  Stick them anywhere else and the Wigmore's democratic acoustic blends the voice seamlessly with whatever else is around. It would be an exaggeration to claim that Bell was inaudible, but she was certainly hard to hear, at times dipping beneath the level of the scant instrumentation. The problem was compounded by Bell's (quite correct) election for a true, speaking tone sprechstimme, meaning her voice rarely projected as far as pure singing would.

Soile Isokoski's rendition of Strauss's Four Last Songs fared even worse. For some reason, Isokoski was jammed up against the back wall. There were only thirteen musicians in front of her in James Ledger's new pared-down arrangement, but they were enough to drown her out almost totally. Christine Brewer in the vast barn of the Royal Albert Hall with a hundred instruments behind her came over more strongly.

Not only that but the wind instruments, a particularly strident piccolo especially, all but submerged the strings. Whether the Wigmore acoustic or the new arrangement was responsible, the effect was the same - the honeyed glow of Strauss's lush, string-heavy sound was all but eradicated.

Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie suffered from similar if not even more exaggerated balance problems, and, for the audience at front left, the additional merely visual obstacle of a grand piano (unused) blocking their view of the stage.

Maybe those at the back of the hall had better luck with the sound - it's sometimes the case - but in a venue noted for the quality of its acoustic really everyone should enjoy at least acceptable sound balance.

How ironic that the acoustic hotspot at centre front was occupied by the only musician who remained silent all night - the conductor.

This isn't the first time the cut-down London Philharmonic have failed to master the hall's acoustics, so why haven't lessons been learned?

bargain Britain is cheapest for classical music

It's often assumed that generous public subsidy for the arts in continental Europe must make tickets cheaper. Not necessarily so. I compared prices across the globe for a selection of orchestral concerts next month, taking in the US too for good measure (scroll down for full list).

The first thing to notice is that in London, the LPO charge nearly twice as much (£55) as the LSO (£32)for their top-price tickets. Could that be one of the reasons why their concerts are only half as full?

But to catch the LSO in Paris will cost you more than twice as much (£75) as in London (£32). The Philharmonia, too, is more expensive (£75 and £45). The LPO however charge a comparatively cheap £48 in New York, less than they do in London (£55), and less than the NY Phil (£72) at the same address.

It's cheaper to see the Vienna Philharmonic at the Barbican (£55) than in Vienna (£94), and the heavily-subsidised Orchestre de Paris (£53) and Munich Philharmonic (£51) are both pricier at home than the LSO or Philharmonia, and only marginally cheaper than the LPO.

Looking at the bottom end of the price scale, all three London orchestras offer tickets at £7 to £9 (and plenty of them). The lowest price elsewhere is generally at least twice that, and goes up to £46 for the Berlin Philharmonic and £30 for the LA Philharmonic.

Of course this is only a handful of concerts, but I believe the results are broadly representative. And while the current euro exchange rate is on the weak side, it doesn't make a lot of difference.

The list:

• LSO at the Barbican £7 to £32
• Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall £9 to £45
• LPO at the Royal Festival Hall £9 to £55
• Vienna Philharmonic at the Barbican £12 to £55

• LSO at Salle Pleyel, Paris €10 to €85 (£9 to £75)
• Philharmonia at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris €5 to €85 (£5 to £75)
• LPO at Avery Fisher Hall, New York $22 to $75 (£19 to £48)

• Orchestre de Paris at Salle Pleyel, Paris €10 to €60 (£9 to £53)
• Vienna Philharmonic at Konzerthaus Wien €18.90 to €106.20 (£17 to £94)
• Berlin Philharmonic at Philharmonie Berlin €52 to €112 (£46 to £99)
• Munich Philharmonic at Gasteig, Munich €11.70 to €57.50 (£10 to £51)
• New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, New York $29 to $112 (£19 to £72)
• LA Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA $47 to $160 (£30 to £102)

(the conversion rates used were $/£ 1.56 and €/£ 1.14)

London Philharmonic Orchestra play it safe - 2010/11 season details

The LPO's 2010-11 season details are now online (though not open for public booking until 15 February).

There's a noticeable absence of the sort of bold, overscaled (if not always successful) programming Jurowski has turned out in the past. But then half empty halls and a missing £2.3m yet to be recovered from their ex-finance director perhaps don't encourage a spirit of adventure.

The inevitable and protracted Mahler anniversary tribute will extend over fifteen concerts, and the rest of the schedule is largely packed with guaranteed audience-pleasers from the likes of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Only five evenings feature new works, all on the short side.

Guests include Anna Caterina Antonacci in Berlioz's La Mort de Cléopâtre on 16 February 2011, Christine Brewer in Strauss''s Four Last Songs on 4 May 2011 and Christian Gerhaher with songs from Des knaben Wunderhorn on 28 May 2011.

Leif Ove Andsnes, Evgeny Kissin, Hélène Grimaud and the underrated Andreas Haefliger are amongst the visiting pianists.

A whizzy new website feature allows you to flip through the new season brochure.

ENO and London Philharmonic offers

The Evening Standard is once again offering cheap tickets for English National Opera's Le Grand Macabre and various London Philharmonic concerts.

The ENO tickets are at the back of the Dress Circle (lousy view, lousy sound) - but at least they're only £10. Book online here.

The LPO is offering two tickets for the price of one for a long list of concerts - see it here. To book tickets call the London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office on 020 7840 4242 and quote London Evening Standard Offer'.

(Thanks Howard for the tip)

What's on in London in September

Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.

Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.

Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).

On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.

Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.

If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.

Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".

Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.

Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.

Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.

English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.

There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.

And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.

Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.

At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.

At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).

And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.

a slight smell of burning

LPO / Jurowski / Pape - Royal Festival Hall, 31 May 2009

The balcony was closed due to lack of interest. The stalls were lightly sprinkled with the dedicated, the curious, and a few first timers clutching heavily discounted tickets (everyone from lastminute.com to the German Embassy was flogging them). The 2,900 seat Royal Festival Hall is hard enough to fill at the best of times, and the promise of 'new music' doesn't make it any easier.

Tonight's UK premiere was Torsten Rasch's Mein Herz brennt ("my heart burns"), a vast slab of heavy metal-tinged neo-romanticism in the form of a song cycle. The stage was built out to accommodate an orchestra so oversized they frequently drowned out the principal soloist, Rene Pape, despite his amplification. Couldn't someone have twiddled a knob somewhere? He sounds fabulous on the recording and it was a shame the live experience couldn't match up.

Katharina Thalbach, who wisely clutched her microphone to her chin, came across more clearly. Her whisky'n'cigs spoken vocals, somewhere between Lotte Lenya and the possession scene from The Exorcist, echoed the dark and brooding tone of the self-consciously retro music, which looks back to Zemlinsky and Schreker as much as Berg and Mahler.

The modern twist comes in the text, sourced from the lyrics of the German industrial metal band Rammstein. The tunes themselves are mostly discarded, but the melodic line retains more than a hint of rock rhythm. And despite the strong individual characterisation of each song, the relentlessly dense texture and earsplitting volume they all share is as cumulatively bludgeoning as a night in with Rammstein themselves.

The long evening began with the fifth symphony of Mendelssohn, the Susan Boyle of this year's anniversary composers, over-exposed and seemingly inescapable.

 Mahler's Todtenfeier, a sketch for the first movement of his second symphony was an interesting choice. Not just because of Rasch's Mahler influence either - the LPO will open next season with a performance of the full symphony. This performance didn't dig too deep and sounded a tad under-rehearsed and, but the clarity and driving pace promised much.

 

  

 

London Philharmonic clearout sale

The LPO, in conjunction with the Evening Standard, are again offering 2 tickets for the price of 1 to selected concerts, as follows:

Wednesday 27 May - Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov and Dvorak - with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Aldo Ciccolini
Sunday 31 May - Mahler, Mendelssohn and Rasch - with Vladimir Jurowski and René Pape
Friday 5 June - Debussy, Elgar and Beethoven - with Mario Venzago and Thorleif Thedéen

Full concert details here.

Seats cost between £9 and £55 each, and bookings must be made before 2pm on the day before the concert to qualify for the offer.

To book, call the London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office on 020 7840 4242 (no fee) or the Southbank Centre on  0871 663 2530 (£2.50 fee), quoting 'Eros Card offer', or visit the Southbank Centre.

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Tickets for the 31 May concert are also available on lastminute.com for £10

What's on in London in May

There's always plenty on in London musically speaking, but May looks particularly busy.

For starters, at the Royal Opera House, Diana Damrau and Giuseppe Filianoti take a roll in the hay for the first revival of Laurent Pelly's L'elisir d'amore. Il trovatore and Lohengrin are still around too.

At the ENO, David Alden's hotly-anticipated new Peter Grimes opens. Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft, Gerald Finley and Felicity Palmer sing, Edward Gardner conducts. The second new production of the month is film director Abbas Kiarostami's first venture into opera, Così fan tutte.

Purcell's King Arthur is performed in concert at the Barbican on 6 May by Le Concert Spirituel. There are limited *free* tickets for under-26's for this one (check out the freeB link on the Barbican site).

17 May is Handel-fest day. Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music bring Arianna in Creta to the Barbican. Miah Persson, Lisa Milne and Sonia Prina appear as originally scheduled, but Kristina Hammarström replaces the previously-announced Angelika Kirchschlager.

The performance starts at 6.30pm, so there should be (just) enough time to get there from Zurich Opera's Agrippina, which begins at 2pm in the Royal Festival Hall. The impressive cast joining Marc Minkowski and Zurich Opera's specialist period ensemble, Orchestra La Scintilla, includes Vesselina Kasarova, Eva Liebau, Marijana Mijanovic and Anna Bonitatibus.

The other operatic event worth mentioning is not in London at all, but in Manchester.  Over two nights, 9 and 10 May, Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra perform Götterdämmerung in concert at the Bridgewater Hall, with Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde. If this was in London, tickets would go in a flash, but there are still plenty of seats available.  Manchester is clearly a harder sell. It rather underlines the folly of the Royal Opera House's plans to create a Mancunian outpost. Northern opera lovers may be dedicated - there just aren't a lot of them.

On 31 May, Rene Pape joins Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall for the UK premiere of Torsten Rasch's 2003 song cycle Mein Herz brennt. This is (loosely) based on the music of headbanging German industrial metallers Rammstein - a fact the Southbank promo guff intriguingly fails to mention. Not as scary as it sounds though, as the source material is engulfed by Jurowski's favoured big-boned retro-nouveau Eastern bloc neo-romanticism (or Vladcore for short).

On a smaller scale, there are lots of recitals this month, including the big one, Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the Royal Festival Hall on 19 May.

At Wigmore Hall Kate Royal sings Schumann and Brahms on 7 May, and there's a solo recital from the great Jordi Savall the day after. On 19 May (the same date as Netrebko/Hvorostovsky unfortunately) Mojca Erdmann, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber tackle Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch. The Wigmore's busy Haydn weekend begins on 29 May with an András Schiff lecture recital at 2pm.

And there are a few more Wigmore day time events worth mentioning. On 12 May at 2pm there's a *free* recital of Kurtag and Schubert by Jonathan Biss, which will be recorded for the Wigmore's own label. On 18 May at 1pm Anne Schwanewilms sings Debussy, Strauss and Wolf, and on 25 May at 1pm Ingrid Fliter plays Chopin and Schumann.

Philip Glass makes a rare appearance at the Barbican on 26 May for an evening of chamber music.

The fabulous Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain plink and twang at the Cadogan Hall on 5 May.

One of the most intriguing events of the month is a Barbican concert on 30 May. Various artists including the Britten Sinfonia perform the Music of Moondog , and there are companion pre, post and interval events, including an 11.30pm concert at St Giles Cripplegate, Moondog Around Midnight .

Rossini's Ermione - medium rare or well-done?

Ermione - Royal Festival Hall, 28 March 2009

Ermione is not quite the rarity that this concert's publicity suggested. Scattered recordings and the odd staging prove that.

But it wasn't hard to see why it's usually passed over in favour of Rossini's better-known works. Innovations like the choral overture have novelty on their side but not much else. Amongst the formulaic chirruping there lurk a few good tunes, but no great ones. The plot is strong (it's lifted from Racine's Andromaque), but Rossini doesn't manage to wrestle it to the ground and pummel it into shape. So the first act huffs and puffs without going anywhere, and the abrupt ending in death and madness feels like a cop-out.

So, like Matilde di Shabran, it's one of those works that needs staggeringly good singers to bring it alive.

Well, it got one, anyway  - Colin Lee. He still looks like the chartered accountant he once was, but his vocal agility and phenomenal accuracy put him up there with Juan Diego Flórez. As Ermione's spurned lover, Oreste, driven to murder by her impossible demands, he gave it everything in a truly impassioned performance. Outstanding, and the packed, enthusiastic audience gave him the lengthy ovation he deserved.

Bülent Bezdüz provided the JDF (pre-rhinoplasty) looks and some stylish, ardent singing in the small role of Pilade. Like Colin Lee, he made it all sound easy.

Carmen Giannattasio's Ermione was pretty good too. The dramatic part of the role gave her no problems - gelosia and vendetta spat out in every syllable. But the voice is a little heavy for the rapid coloratura, which sounded effortful and sometimes even panicky. It was a problem shared by the all-too-stolid Paul Nilon as Pirro, too - every note was accurate, but hauled laboriously into place.

Patricia Bardon was an odd choice for Andromaca, the target of Ermione's spite and envy. There's no question about her abilities, but the voice is simply too deep and sultry, and again, too slow-moving to sparkle in this repertoire. 

The London Philharmonic were clearly well-rehearsed, but David Parry's spun-out phrasing and thick vibrato left the music earth-bound where it should have soared. The Geoffrey Mitchell Choir though were excellent, really alert and co-ordinated, and their diction was faultless.

There seems to be a ready market for second-string Rossini, so I suspect more is on its way.  But as with any music, the less polish there is in the writing, the more there needs to be in the performance, and this one didn't quite get all the way there.

Paul Nilon and Carmen Giannattasio:

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What's on in London in March

Is February over already?

Opera 

At the Royal Opera House, I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca opens on 2 March. Kill for tickets.

Next up is a new double bill of Dido and Aeneas with Acis and Galatea opening 31 March. Choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose work demonstrates little musical sensibility, is the odd choice of director. Sarah Connolly, Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies and Danielle de Niese make their ROH debuts.

On 13 March there's a one-off performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem . Antonio Pappano conducts Barbara Frittoli, Olga Borodina, Piotr Beczala and Ildar Abdrazakov. Sold out, but check for returns towards the date.

At ENO, there's a revival of one of their better recent productions, David Alden's Jenùfa with Amanda Roocroft.

English Touring Opera bring the Magic Flute to Hackney Empire on 12 and 14 March, with Katya Kabanova on 13 March. For authentic 'period' atmosphere (and a bargain), buy the cheapest balcony seats, then stand at the back with your beer (the balcony bar is open throughout the show).

On 2, 4 and 9 March the Royal Academy of Music present Haydn's charming La fedeltà premiata in their bijou but perfectly-formed theatre.

Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBCSO attempt an overdue rehabilitation of Martinů's Julietta in concert at the Barbican on 27 March, with Magdalena Kozena in the title role.

And on 28 March David Parry and the LPO bring Rossini's Ermione to the Royal Festival Hall. 

Not opera

At the Barbican, 7 March is the BBCSO's Xenakis day. On 11 March Thomas Quasthoff presents a Bach and Handel programme. On 12 March it's the turn of Valery Gergiev and the LSO, who perform  Parsifal's Act 3 with the awesome Rene Pape and the remarkably-tattooed Evgeny Nikitin. Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw visit on 14 and 15 March with Beethoven's 7th and Bruckner's 9th.

The Royal Festival Hall hosts Maurizio Pollini on 4 March and the not-so-retired-after-all Alfred Brendel on 7 March (it's a charity concert for Comic Relief and he's credited as 'poet'). On 12 March at 6pm there's a FREE concert of Oliver Knussen's vocal works, conducted by the composer himself, with Claire Booth. A few tickets remain for countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the Purcell Room on 23 March. On 29 March Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra are joined by Anja Harteros in a programme that includes the Eroica Symphony and Strauss's Four Last Songs.

At Wigmore Hall,  Mark Padmore visits on 12 March with a Brahms and Schubert programme. Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk appear on 26 March. Check the website for the inevitable returns.

London Philharmonic Orchestra £10 ticket offer

Just £10 yes £10 will buy you the best available ticket (worth up to £38) for the premiere of Vladimir Martynov’s opera Vita Nuova at the Royal Festival Hall on 18 February in a concert performance from Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The discount is only available for phone bookings and the top secret password is 'Almeida offer'.

Contact either: London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office: 020 78404242 Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm, no booking fee, or Southbank Centre Ticket Office: 0870 6632530 daily, 9am-8.30pm, booking fee applies.

I can't recommend it because I haven't heard it - though I have to admit what little of Martynov's music I've been exposed to so far has struck me as unpromising retro kitsch. But the samples on the LPO site (check the link above) suggest something of a more liturgical bent - John Tavener meets Mills & Boon maybe. Who knows - at £10 a ticket it's gotta be worth the risk anyway, rite?

Goerne's Mahler; Mahler's Beethoven

LPO / Jarvi / Matthias Goerne - Royal Festival Hall, 4 February 2009

The Thames from the Royal Festival Hall, 4.2.09

Why did Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth arouse hostility in its early Vienna performances? Hard to tell from Neeme Jarvi's LPO presentation - the differences from Beethoven's original score weren't glaring. As Jeremy Barham's very helpful pre-concert talk set out, most of Mahler's changes involved doubling up wind and brass lines, with a few dynamic variations here and there. He added a tuba (unknown in Beethoven's day); he transposed some string lines up an octave. Hardly fundamental stuff. It's easy to suspect any controversy arose more from Mahler's idiosyncratic conducting style than from his subtle tinkerings.

In contrast Neeme Jarvi seemed reluctant to impose himself on the music at all. The Scherzo was lively enough, but the surrounding movements were flabbily anodyne, and the final movement more panicky than joyful. 

A few lapses of ensemble hardly helped, and flute intonation was excruciatingly inexact. At least the choir and soloists did a reasonable job.

The first half's Kindertotenlieder were more successful. The barn-sized Royal Festival Hall seemed to shrink around Matthias Goerne as he confided the painful intimacies.

His voice wasn't quite 100 percent - the traces of a cold perhaps - but he still managed a beautifully nuanced and moving performance, despite some graceless support from the LPO.

  

What's on in London in February

David McVicar brings his chipolata-stuffed Rigoletto back to the Royal Opera House on 10 February.  Star-power is limited to veterans Leo Nucci and Paolo Gavanelli sharing the title role but this is Verdi at his most unbreakable so that's all it needs. We wait eagerly to see what Francesco Meli and Ekaterina Siurina can make of the Duke and Gilda. More Ekaterina in recital at St John's Smith Square on 20 February.

George Benjamin's highly-praised shortie Into the Little Hill gets its long-awaited London premiere in the Linbury Studio on 14 February. It's coupled with Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side. Still no casting details on the ROH site, whatever that means.

But the major event of the month at Covent Garden is the premiere of Tim Albery's new production of Der fliegende Holländer on 23 February with Bryn 'teh Chin' Terfel as the Dutchman.

At ENO, Jonathan Miller's new La Bohème opens tomorrow. And you are duly warned that John Adams's irredeemably dim-witted Dr Atomic, which I saw in New York last autumn (well the first half anyway: I walked out at the interval) arrives on 25 February. On the plus side, it has a far better production and cast than the material deserves.

Opera Holland Park slip through the park gates and catch the 391 to Richmond Theatre where from 24 February the simple country folk can enjoy their brilliant Tosca from last summer. There are two casts - Amanda Echalaz, the best Tosca in town, sings on 25 and 27 February and 1 March.

The Barbican presents Handel's oratorio Samson on 12 February, for which The Sixteen are joined by a terrific line of of soloists including Mark Padmore, Gillian Keith, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Roderick Williams. And on 22 and 23 February, the LSO record Berlioz's Te Deum with Sir Colin Davis

Wigmore Hall's bargain-priced 4 o'clock Sunday song recitals continue with two artists on the brink of major careers - Jacques Imbrailo on 15 February and Lucy Crowe on 22 February.

On 21 February Gustavo Dudamel makes an eagerly-awaited return to London, where he conducts the Philharmonia in Mahler's 5th at the Royal Festival Hall.

And at the same place tomorrow night, 4 February Matthias Goerne joins Neeme Jarvi and the LPO for Mahler's Kindertotenlieder coupled with a purist-agitating rarity - Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's 9th. There's a free talk at 6.15 for anyone who's interested in the background to this fascinating molestation. The photo below shows Mahler conducting Beethoven's 9th in Strasbourg in 1905.

LPO miss Mark

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Mark Elder / Alice Coote / Paul Nilon - Wigmore Hall, 9 January 2009

What's the point of a conductor? This recital, so tempting on paper, proved that even with a chamber-sized ensemble, a stick-waver is not dispensable.

Thirteen members of the LPO squeezed on to the bijou Wigmore stage and attempted to steer themselves through the tricky waters of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll without a guide, and at a guess, without a lot of rehearsal.  There were numerous glaring slips of ensemble. Balance was non-existent, winds massively overweighted. Tempo or dynamics were cautiously unvarying - monotony spared us the otherwise inevitable chaos. The musicians looked relieved just to reach the end. I certainly was.

It was a different story when Mark Elder picked up the baton for Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. There was even less room on the platform now, and musicians spilled out behind through the doorways. But at least they were playing together, more focussed yet paradoxically more relaxed. Even the intonation was for some reason more accurate.

But the Wigmore Hall acoustics are not kind to such massive forces, however closely reined. They treat every instrument and every voice democratically. To a string quartet, it's a miracle that magically makes them sing with one voice. For Paul Nilon and Alice Coote it was a disaster. Despite heroic efforts, they were frequently inaudible, not riding the band, but joining it.

Paul Nilon's ringing tenor was abandoned in every possible sense in the lurching waltz of the opening drinking song. The looped and intertwined instrumental lines sprang out with crystal clarity; the tenor sank slowly to the bottom of the glass.

Alice Coote fared a little better. At least the mezzo is allotted some of the more thinly-orchestrated passages, so she could shine through without force. She brought delicacy and exuberance in turn to Von der Schönheit, and with her unique gift for inhabiting even the silence, caught the disquieting change in atmosphere that occurs at the end of the song - without singing a note. Perhaps you had to be there. Nostalgia and yearning were joined in Der Abschied, her exquisitely poised farewell.

I suspect only age and infirmity prevented the capacity audience from rising to their feet at the end. I haven't heard many ovations that loud or prolonged at the Wigmore for a while. But while you couldn't fault the effort, or dispute the Wigmore audience's sentimental adoration of Coote and Elder (based on a history of solid performances) what this performance really proved is that if the performers don't fit the platform, the sound doesn't fit the hall. Oh, and a conductor is not a luxury.