Get half price tickets for Rolando at the Royal Festival Hall on 15 May with a Time Out offer.
The discount is only valid on the bottom three price bands (no front stalls), and you don't get to pick your seat. Prices after discount run from £21 to £34.
Time Out also have a half price offer for ENO's Wozzeck (dress circle and upper circle seats only).
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Jonas Kaufmann / Philharmonia Orchestra c.Jochen Rieder - Royal Festival Hall, 21 April 2013
You can gauge the quality of a Wagnerian tenor by the size of his Wälse. Jonas Kaufmann has a big one. Two in fact. He dragged them out a little beyond the bounds of musicality at the Royal Festival Hall - but with breath control like that, who wouldn't?
Continue reading "Jonas Kaufmann at the Royal Festival Hall" »
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First up on Claudio Abbado's Royal Festival Hall date with the Orchestra Mozart: Haydn's Surprise Symphony.
And second: a surprise pianist.
Substituting for the previously-advertised Maria Joao Pires on 1 October is the elusive Martha Argerich.
Mozart's Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat is currently on the bill, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that change.
Still plenty of tickets left, but mostly at the back.
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The Southbank Centre have just announced their 2013/14 Shell International programme of guest orchestra visits.
Highlights include Claudio Abbado with the Orchestra Mozart on 10 October 2013 and Antonio Pappano with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra on 17 and 18 May 2014.
Booking opens for members on 21 January and the general public in February. It's probable the Abbado date will sell out quickly, so early booking is advisable.
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Der fliegende Holländer - Oper Zürich - Royal Festival Hall, 15 December 2012
As they've done a few times before, Zurich Opera interrupted their home schedule to bring a concert version of a current show to the Royal Festival Hall - orchestra, singers and all.
This time round, it was their new production of Der fliegende Holländer. Both London houses have tackled it recently. Neither managed, with all the costumes, curtains and furnishing items at their disposal, anything nearly as thrilling as Zurich gave us with a bare stage - and a few top-class singers.
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'Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers' is the weighty title of the OAE's latest concert series. Inspired by the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the orchestra celebrate music written about and for women with guests to include Sarah Connolly, Emma Bell and William Christie.
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Next Saturday (7 July) offers an opportunity to get in touch with your inner Welsh rare bits and sing along with Bryn Terfel at the Royal Festival Hall. The choral classics to be covered include Men Of Harlech, Cwm Rhondda, All Through The Night and Land Of My Fathers.
The rehearsal starts at 4.30pm, and those who prefer to just watch can come and see the performance at 6pm. Either way, the event is free.
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There was a surprise in store at the end of tonight's Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra concert at the Royal Festival Hall.
As Gustavo Dudamel returned to the stage to take yet another round of applause, he was accompanied by a statuesque figure in a horned helmet and eyepatch with a dead sheep slung around his neck.
Their mambo days now apparently behind them, the no-longer-youth orchestra encored with Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge from Das Rheingold - the sheepskin-draped figure revealed as Bryn Terfel.
I can report that he's loud enough to drown out what looked like 140 musicians. And he knows all the words. All good news of course for those of us lucky enough to have tickets for autumn's Ring cycles at Covent Garden.
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Jessye Norman - Royal Festival Hall, 21 May 2012
Birgit Nilsson once described the chief requirement for singing Isolde as “comfortable shoes”. Jessye Norman went one step further at last night’s recital, dispensing with shoes altogether in favour of fluffy mauve socks, a perfect colour match for the shimmering silken tarpaulin swathing her generous curves. With a huge sparkly brooch competing with her dazzling smile, she filled the stage. And I don’t mean in the Johan Botha sense.
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Staatskapelle Berlin / Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 17 & 20 April 2012
The Barenboim circus rolled into London last week to perform Bruckner's last three symphonies under the grandiose banner (blame the Southbank Centre) of 'The Bruckner Project'.
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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.
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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.
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Jonas Kaufmann / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra cond.Jochen Rieder - Royal Festival Hall, 24 October 2011
What's hot, yummy and Bavarian? No, not Weisswurst.
Drooling as adorably as a basset hound in his recently-fitted braces, Jonas Kaufmann won over tonight's London audience to the tune of four encores. His programme stretched from verismo cheese to the magnificence of Wagner and he didn't put one foot wrong.
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Ensemble intercontemporain with Lucerne Festival Academy Ensemble / Pierre Boulez / Barbara Hannigan - Royal Festival Hall, 2 October 2011
Pierre Boulez has conducted operas, amongst them several landmark performances, though he’s famously never written one himself. But Pli selon pli suggests he has all the technical equipment. His settings of five Mallarmé poems are alert to text in every way. Structure, syntax and the very sound of the words are reflected as unerringly as their meaning. Between the sledgehammer chords that open and close the hour long work, a ravishing parade of shimmering strings, chinking xylophones and silky winds belie a reputation for ugliness that Boulez picked up over sixty years ago and has never quite managed to shake off.
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Staatskapelle Berlin / Pierre Boulez / Daniel Barenboim - Royal Festival Hall, 13 June 2011
Daniel Barenboim has always been a popular draw in London, but since the unexpectedly massive success of his Beethoven sonata series at the Royal Festival Hall three years ago, he's acquired near-divine status. There was a palpable air of anticipation as he took the stage, silence as he performed, and a rockstar ovation to send him home - all of which he lapped up gratefully and gracefully.
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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.
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Berlin Philharmonic / Simon Rattle - Barbican and Southbank, 20 - 23 February 2011
If you've been reading the papers over the past few days, you might be forgiven for thinking you'd missed the Second Coming.
The Berlin Philharmonic's four back-to-back nights in London have been greeted by near-universal gushing, including an emotional Guardian editorial invoking Karajan and Furtwängler. Has there been anything quite that overheated since, well, since the last time we had Berliners over? - Daniel Barenboim and his "handsome mahogany-toned Staatskapelle Berlin" to be precise.
And did they earn it?
Continue reading "yea verily the Berlin Philharmonic have walkethed among us" »
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At long last. Three weeks after revealing the details privately to the press (who weren't excited enough to print anything), the Southbank Centre have finally got round to letting their customers know about next season's piano and chamber music concerts.
There's still nothing on the website itself, but if you have any interest (or more importantly, money) left, they've released pdf brochures for the piano season and the chamber season.
Piano highlights include Maurizio Pollini (6 March 2012); Mitsuko Uchida (23 April 2012) playing the last three Schubert sonatas, three Boulez/Liszt dates with Pierre-Laurent Aimard; and a rare London recital from Arcadi Volodos (22 May 2012). A large proportion of this year's recitals take place in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which probably makes sense from a capacity perspective, but unfortunately also means no cheap seats anywhere near the stage.
Chamber highlights include the complete Bartók String Quartets with the Takács Quartet (18, 19 October 2011), the complete Beethoven Cello Sonatas with Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin (27, 29 April 2012) and a folk-inspired recital from Magdalena Kozena (8 February 2012).
Booking opens on 28 February for members and 7 March for the general public.
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Here's a suggestion for the Southbank Centre press office. Next time you go to the time and expense of a press junket to launch your season, why not add the details to your website as well? Together with booking instructions? That way, anyone whose interest is piqued by the puff pieces your efforts have elicited might actually be encouraged to buy a ticket. Which, after all, is the goal.
As it is, there remain few secrets in classical music more closely guarded than the details of what exactly the Southbank Centre has in store for next year and when you can buy tickets. But with the aid of Google and the helpful lady at the end of the Southbank visitor services phone I've worked most of it out.
Continue reading "Southbank Centre 2011-12 classical season" »
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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.
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