Two women featured prominently in this programme; the one a composer and the other a conductor.
Matthew Bourne is not the first choreographer to tinker with the story of The Sleeping Beauty and he won't be the last, such is the lure of Tchaikovsky's score and the potency of the plot.
It’s an ill heatwave that brings nobody any good, and Buxton International Festival’s decision to move its highlight concert, by Manchester Camerata with Jess Gillam and the Brodsky Quartet as their guests, from the Buxton Octagon to St John’s Church meant not only that it was heard in probably the only coolish venue in town yesterday afternoon, but also that it benefitted from an acoustic that’s excellent for instrumental music.
A fortnight ago I performed Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Aurora Orchestra, joining them and their Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon in Cologne. Tonight we shall present the same programme at the Royal Festival Hall. These are my first appearances with Aurora and as a Ukrainian, I feel so grateful that even during a terrible time like this, I can continue making music. The situation in my homeland feels so overwhelming that getting on with music right now is the best thing to do for now, at least mentally.
Sitting in a huge marquee on a June evening, with the sun peeking through every gap in the canopy, it is quite a stretch to imagine yourself in the remote countryside of rural Russia. But this new production of Eugene Onegin manages that, and with a minimum of means.
National sensitivities are running understandably high right now in the thick of an ever-escalating aggression. What a shame that the Southbank Centre has excluded Russian artists from performing alongside British and Ukrainian performers to bring a message of peace through the arts in their upcoming fundraiser. Not so "Dance for Ukraine" at the London Coliseum, including Natalia Osipova in its line-up.
Having conducted two Discovery programmes with the LSO after being a finalist in the 2016 Donatella Flick competition, London-born Kerem Hasan went on to win the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award in 2017.
The legendary quip of a sophisticated ballet critic that we are all one Nutcracker nearer death never rang so true as now. One goes to the theatre with one’s heart in one’s mouth, behind the partypooping mask.
Welcome back Andrew Litton, Conductor Laureate of the Bournemouth Symphony, for the latest of many happy annual returns since his tenure as Principal Conductor between 1988 and 1994.
Peasant harvesters enter from the facsimile of Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington garden to the right (stage left) of the state-of-the-art pavilion and, splendidly led by a solo tenor (Dominick Felix), burst into song. The temptation is to burst into tears, for this is the first time, surely, any of us has heard a rich, full chorus live for over a year.