SINCE 1999 A LIVE REVIEW SITE FOR OPERA, BALLET, CONCERTS, BROADCASTS, AND THEATRE
United Kingdom Weinberg, Shostakovich: Quatuor Danel (Marc Danel, Gilles Millet [violins], Vlad Bogdanas [viola], Yovan Markovitch [cello]). Wigmore Hall, London, 6.5.2025. (CC)
United Kingdom Janáček, The Excursions of Mr Brouček (‘Výlety páně Broučkovy’, concert performance): Soloists, Tenebrae; London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 4.5.2025 (CC)
United Kingdom Ravel: Circa (Yaron Lifschitz [artistic director, stage and lighting designer], Libby McDonnell [costume designer]), BBC Singers, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London. 23.4.2025. (CSa)
Fidelio Café’s Raffaello Morales in conversation with Christopher Sallon
‘It’s an amazing coincidence!’ exclaims Raffaello Morales, the 37- year-old, Italian-born owner, manager, conductor, and musical entrepreneur behind the Fidelio Café. From the small first floor office of his Farringdon premises, he points towards a small house located just across the road dedicated to the nineteenth-century Italian patriot, exile and father of the Risorgimento Giuseppe Mazzini. Morales regards Mazzini as an inspirational figure. Although these two men are separated by more than a century (Mazzini died in 1872 and Morales was born in 1987), there are uncanny coincidences which link them, beyond mere nationality and their connection to ‘Little Italy’, as this area of Clerkenwell is still known.
United Kingdom Sibelius, Weill, Shostakovich – Symphony of Shadows: Roderick Williams (baritone), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, 27.4.2025. (JR)
United Kingdom Mahler: Soloists, Tiffin Boys’ Choir (director: James Day), London Philharmonic Choir (artistic director: Neville Creed), London Symphony Chorus (chorus director: Mariana Rosas), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner (conductor), Royal Festival Hall, London, 26.4.2025. (JR)
86 BBC Proms: 72 at the Royal Albert Hall and 14 at venues across the UK
The BBC Proms presents an eight-week celebration of music featuring over 3,000 artists, the first overnight Prom in almost half a century and more than 80 solo debuts
General booking opens at 9am on Saturday 17 May for more information click here.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2025/26 London season
Key highlights:
The LPO’s 2025/26 season theme, Harmony with Nature, explores humanity’s bond with the natural world and issues a call to protect it – through the power of music that confronts, celebrates and inspires.
Contemporary voices throughout the season such as Gabriela Lena Franks’s Contested Eden (responding to wildfires), Gustavo Díaz-Jerez’s Tajogaite (volcanoes) and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s CATAMORPHOSIS (a sense of urgency driven by shifting polar forces) offer a contrasting reflection to the idyllic scenes of oceans, forests and mountains of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Sibelius.
The season also features seven-time Grammy Award-winning composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who, alongside his own jazz quintet, will perform the UK premiere of A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) with the Orchestra.
An array of star guests includes legendary violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, pianists Yefim Bronfman and Alexandre Kantorow, soprano Jennifer France and baritone Stéphane Degout.
More guest soloists this season include pianists Paul Lewis, Anna Vinnitskaya and Pavel Kolesnikov, as well as violinists James Ehnes, Alina Ibragimova and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider.
The LPO’s performing and community activity in its Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden residencies is also announced today. Highlights include an evening of song with Danielle de Niese in Brighton, and Edward Gardner conducting a selection of Elgar works in Eastbourne.
The LPO will perform 9 premieres across the season including (in London and Birmingham) Tan Dun’s Nine – an ‘ode to peace’ commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society as a companion piece to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in its 200th anniversary year.
LPO Principal Conductor Edward Gardner presents ‘Phoenix Lands’, a two-concert focus exploring his fascination of twentieth-century composers from Central Europe.
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