contemporary music
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
The Stockhausen work that is worth braving
Grade: A- One of the best one-liners attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham refers to the stridently avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen: ‘I’ve…
Every crumb of Kurtag’s music is a feast: Endgame, at the Proms, reviewed
The fun starts early in Beckett’s Endgame. Within minutes of opening his mouth, blind bully Hamm decides to starve his…
A brilliantly cruel Cosi and punkish Petrushka but the Brits disappoint: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence reviewed
Aix is an odd place. It should be charming, with its dishevelled squares, Busby Berkeley-esque fountains, pretty ochres and pinks.…
The future of opera – I hope: WNO’s Candide reviewed
Bernstein’s Candide is the operetta that ought to work, but never quite does. Voltaire’s featherlight cakewalk through human misery, set…
The West has much to learn from Hungarian culture
Hungarian culture is living through a golden age, says Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and the West has much to learn from it
How Ukrainians are making the lives of even anti-Putin Russian artists impossible
Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since the invasion of Ukraine
Apocalypse chic: Autechre, Last Days and Southbank's Xenakis day reviewed
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Grey, grey and more grey: Aida, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
Grey. More grey. So very, very grey. That’s the main visual impression left by Robert Carsen’s new production of Verdi’s…
A classic in the making: Glyndebourne's Poulenc double bill reviewed
One morning in the 20th century, Thérèse wakes up next to her husband and announces that she’s a feminist. Hubby,…
An intimate, lucid and unforgettable new James MacMillan work
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
Claude Vivier ought to be a modern classic. Why isn't he?
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
Why I booed Birtwistle
Keith Burstein recalls a key moment in the battle for emancipation from the ivory tower of atonalism
Igor Levit deserved his standing ovation; Shostakovich, even more so
Music and politics don’t mix, runs the platitude. Looks a bit tattered now, doesn’t it? For Soviet musicians, of course,…
The genius of Iannis Xenakis
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
Expectations were met and then exceeded: Arooj Aftab, at Celtic Connections, reviewed
We gathered on a freezing Sunday night, inside a barrel-vaulted church designed in the 1890s by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, to…
The music we need right now: James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio reviewed
The two most depressing words in contemporary classical music? That’s easy: holy minimalism. I know, I know. Lots of people…
Are we going to have to start taking Calixto Bieito seriously? ENO’s Carmen reviewed
Calixto Bieito’s Carmen: three words to make an opera critic’s heart leap. Until quite recently, Bieito was the operatic provocateur…
Handsome and revivable but I wasn’t moved: Royal Opera’s Death in Venice reviewed
Premièred within two years of each other, Luchino Visconti’s film and Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice both take Thomas…
Why are Haydn’s operas so lousy? La fedelta premiata reviewed
There’s a book about musicals that every opera lover should read. Not Since Carrie by Ken Mandelbaum is a history…
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
You leave awe-struck but also a bit frazzled: Holland Festival’s Aus Licht reviewed
In Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI hands become fists, arms and elbows clubs, shoving, pounding and ker-pow-ing the keyboard to near oblivion.…
Hearing Gilbert & Sullivan on period instruments was a revelation
‘I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,’ wrote Stravinsky in one…
