Hewitt, Concerto Budapest SO, Keller, Cadogan Hall review - magical Mozart and bullish Beethoven

★★★★ HEWITT, CONCERTO BUDAPEST SO, KELLER Magical Mozart and bullish Beethoven

Smiles all round from a visiting orchestra revelling in a programme of surefire hits

Considering its status as the most famous piece of classical music [citation needed], Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is actually quite rarely programmed in London. I can’t remember the last time I heard it live before last night, and it took the visiting Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra to return it to the repertoire. They played this often stern music with a smile on their faces, as they did the accompanying Mozart and Bartók.

First Person: folk violinist István 'Szalonna' Pál on true Magyar style

FOLK VIOLINIST ISTVAN 'SZALONNA' PAL ON TRUE MAGYAR STYLE Lynchpin of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble on their visit to London

Lynchpin of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble on their visit to London

There's a famous saying that Hungarians are in the middle of Europe. From the West, we have Bach and Palestrina holding our hands; from the East, the Caucasian Turkic peoples. Other nations still need 1,000 years to understand what it means to be Hungarian. In Liszt Mosaics, we want to show our culture, our history and show what the Hungarian soul consists of.

Bluebeard's Castle 1: Bullock, Finley, Theatre of Sound, Stone Nest review - scenes from a marriage

★★★★ BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE 1 Scenes from a marriage from Susan Bullock and Gerald Finley

Two great singing actors make an unusual take on Bartók's masterpiece mostly plausible

Which is the locked-in character of the two in Bluebeard’s Castle? In composing his one-act masterpiece of shattering profundity, composer Bartók clearly intended Bluebeard’s as “the tragedy of a soul destined to be alone”; the woman Judith unlocks five doors to his psyche, but two more doors must be left shut.

Bluebeard’s Castle 2: Komlósi, Relyea, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - consolations of solitude

★★★★ BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE 2 Consolations of solitude from Ildikó Komlósi and John Relyea

Singers transcend concert-performance conventions in the ultimate 'opera of the mind'

Where is the stage – outside or within? The question posed by the prologue of Bartók’s only opera addresses the fundamental privacy of our thoughts, as well as setting the scene for its drama within the theatre of our own minds. For many of us a year and a half of periodic lockdown has only turned up the volume on the echoing contents of our heads, lending an unlooked-for familiarity to Bluebeard’s forbidding castle.

First Persons: Susan Bullock, Gerald Finley and Stephen Higgins on a 'Bluebeard's Castle' with a difference

SUSAN BULLOCK, GERALD FINLEY & STEPHEN HIGGINS 'Bluebeard's Castle' with a difference

How experience of dementia led to a unique take on Bartók's dark masterpiece

Tonight a version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle launches in the intimate surroundings of Stone Nest, a former Welsh chapel in London's West End. Its conductor along with soprano Susan Bullock and baritone Gerald FInley, alternating in the roles of Judith and Bluebeard with Gweneth Ann Rand and Michael Mayes, discuss its special claim on our attention.

 

Stephen Higgins, conductor and co-founder of Theatre of Sound

Baptiste, Series 2, BBC One review - powerful comeback for the sorrowful French detective

★★★★ BAPTISTE, SERIES 2, BBC ONE The sorrowful French detective is back

Another knotty missing-persons mystery from Harry and Jack Williams

Baptiste (BBC One) has two powerful weapons in its armoury, in the shape of its stars – Tchéky Karyo as the titular French ‘tec, and Fiona Shaw as the central character in this second series. Both of them are astonishingly persuasive at conveying unfathomable depths of pain and loss, and it looks like they’ll have plenty of opportunities to prove it across these six episodes.

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer online review - Mahler movements for the fish

★★★★★ BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, FISCHER Mahler movements for the fish

What joy to see a big orchestra in action, even if this isn't all of the Seventh Symphony

In verses from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) set by Mahler as a song, later adapted for the scherzo of his Second Symphony, St Anthony of Padua sermonizes on repentance to the fish, who all listen politely and then carry on behaving as they did before.