Il turco in Italia, Glyndebourne review – who knew 1950s neorealism could be such fun?

★★★★★ IL TURCO IN ITALIA, GLYNDEBOURNE Trust, teamwork and comic invention

Trust, teamwork and comic invention combine to make a winner

The new Glyndebourne production of Rossini's Il turco in Italia has a truly winning smile on its face and a spring and a dance in its musical step. It is brimful of fun and good ideas, conveying the sense that a lot of joy has been had in its making. As one cast member tweeted during rehearsals a couple of weeks ago: "I have not stopped laughing and living my best life all day."

Isserlis, LPO, Elder, Southbank Centre online review – songs of life and death

★★★★ ISSERLIS, LPO, ELDER, SOUTHBANK CENTRE Songs of life and death

Lesser-known Czech passions preface a beloved old favourite

The Southbank Centre automatically stuck the trusty “Bohemian Rhapsodies” headline on this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert of Czech music streamed from the still-deserted Royal Festival Hall. Given Janáček’s presence on the bill, they should have made that “Moravian” as well. I know – get a life.

Bevan, LPO, Jurowski, RFH online review – never-ending stories

★★★★ BEVAN, LPO, JUROWSKI, RFH ONLINE Never-ending stories

A year of disruption ends in gusto – and doubt

The LPO, and its soon-to-depart chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski, began its 2020 Vision season back in February. It set out to mix and match the music of three centuries and show how it echoes in contemporary works. Well, little of that turned out quite as planned: this final concert at the Royal Festival Hall was meant to premiere Sir James MacMillan’s new Christmas Oratorio, now scheduled for the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on 16 January. That outsourced event feels like a saddening symbol of Britain’s interlinked catastrophes this year. 

L'enfant et les sortilèges, VOPERA, LPO, Reynolds online – Ravel and Colette reimagined

★★★★ L'ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES, VOPERA, LPO, REYNOLDS Ravel and Colette reimagined

Through the laptop screen and what the child found there, in a brilliant take on a classic

Colette’s sharply fantastical libretto for Ravel’s second one-act opera imagines wrongs exercised upon objects and animals by a naughty child revisited by the victims upon the perpetrator.

Finley, LPO, Gardner, Royal Festival Hall (p)review - special magic ready for streaming

★★★★★ FINLEY, LPO, GARDNER, ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Special magic back at the Southbank

A privileged glimpse of a great orchestra in full flight back in a much-loved venue

There was a rainbow over the Royal Festival Hall as I crossed one of the Hungerford foot bridges for the first time in six months. The lights and noises inside did not betray the augury. Was it the sheer hallucinatory pleasure of being within the auditorium with a handful of other spectators watching and hearing a full orchestra after what felt like a lifetime?

Radio 3 In Concert, BBC Sounds - a wonderful week of music

RADIO 3 IN CONCERT, BBC SOUNDS A wonderful week of music

Radio 3’s evening concert strand offers a rich vein of the familiar and unfamiliar

The absence of live concerts is not just affecting the "in the flesh" audiences, but also having a knock-on effect for the Radio 3 audience, used to hearing a live or as-live concert every night of the week. The BBC have instead gone to the archive of recentish concerts to keep the In Concert strand alive, and last week’s schedule (20-24 April) presented an array of appetising concerts showing the best kind of enterprising programming.

Denk, LPO, Vänskä, RFH review - 200 years of joy and sorrow

★★★★★ DENK, LPO, VÄNSKÄ, RFH 200 years of joy and sorrow

A febrile odyssey from fresh Beethoven to over-the-rainbow Enescu

Three works two centuries apart, two of them rarities, with 100/200 years between each: that's no guarantee for programming success, and no way to fill a hall (though the London Philharmonic Orchestra admin deserves a good medal for the intricacy of its “2020 Vision” series planning, linked to the Beethoven anniversary and explained by Gavin Dixon in his review of Vladimir Jurowski’s launch concert earlier this month).

Blaauw, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - Beethoven seen in '2020 Vision'

★★★★ BLAAUW, LPO, JUROWSKI, RFH Beethoven seen in '2020 Vision'

Playful aspects in eclectic Beethoven anniversary programme

It’s Beethoven with everything for 2020, the composer’s 250th anniversary year. But the London Philharmonic has devised an interesting approach for their Beethoven-themed programming. “2020 Vision” is a series of concerts which couple a work by Beethoven, or occasionally one of his contemporaries, with a piece written 100 years later and another written 200 years later.

Siegfried, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - an incandescent journey to the mountain top

★★★★ SIEGFRIED, LPO, JUROWSKI, RFH An incandescent journey to the mountain top

Varying degrees of vocal characterisation, but the playing is breathtakingly detailed

Of Wagner's four Ring operas, Siegfried poses the biggest casting problem. Most heroic tenors with the lungs to last the evening are not going to be ideal incarnations of the stroppy adolescent who learns and fights his way through an often nightmarish fairy-tale landscape. Torsten Kerl, not an agile mover to say the least, certainly wasn't.

Wegener, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – on the revolutionary road to Mahler

★★★★ WEGENER, LPO, JUROWSKI, RFH  On the revolutionary road to Mahler

How to blow away the schmaltz, and recover the shock, of an iconic work

For better or worse, because of Visconti’s classic film the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony now inevitably means Venice in its gloomiest moods. So there turned out to be a grim timeliness in a performance on an evening that coincided with the most devastating “acqua alta” to flood the city in half a century. Yet, in keeping with everything he does with the London Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski’s reading at the Royal Festival Hall made us think afresh about an iconic work and dispel its more hackneyed, reach-me-down associations.