Clive Paget

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Clive Paget

It felt as though war and peace were locked in a battle for the very soul of this concert of Russian and Ukrainian music, a savage reminder three years on of the brutal invasion of one country by the other. Things got off to an inauspicious start. Even conductor emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s powers of persuasion couldn’t disguise the fact that Semyon Kotko is second-rate SergeiProkofiev.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Clive Paget

A pair of works by Handel written 40 years apart might have made awkward bedfellows, but director Thomas Guthrie’s fertile imagination ensured it was never a concern here. Staged in the Italianate surrounds of Shoreditch town hall, Tales of Apollo and Hercules was full of astute cross-references from one work to the other.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Clive Paget

The London Philharmonic went out on an artistic limb in this unconventional concert on themes of cross-fertilization and exile, and to their credit they reaped substantial rewards. German conductor Kevin John Edusei was at the helm for an eclectic programme that included classical noodling by pop fusion guru Frank Zappa and that relative rarity, in this country at least, a symphony by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Clive Paget

This year’s London Handel festival got off to a rousing start with new artistic adviser Jonathan Cohen at the helm of Arcangelo, the crack baroque ensemble he founded back in 2010. On the bill was the colourful pastoral L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, in which wit and jollity look set to gain the upper hand before Handel decides to put a dampener on things by insisting on moderation in everything.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Clive Paget

It was Donald Tovey who first coined the phrase “bleeding chunks”, referring to the often unsatisfactory practice of excerpting Wagner’s operas out of context. German conductor Thomas Guggeis’s rather neat solution here was to stitch them together into a relatively seamless whole. It certainly worked well in the second half of this Wagner and Strauss program, the London Philharmonic segueing effortlessly from Tannhäuser into Lohengrin and on to Die Meistersingers von Nürnberg.