Mark Pullinger

London

Music Critic and Editor at Bachtrack

Critic, Bachtrack editor, programme note writer. Best when caffeinated.

Featured in: Favicon

bachtrack.com Favicon

baltimoresun.com Favicon

dailyherald.com Favicon

gramophone.co.uk Favicon

thetimes.co.uk Favicon

substack.com

Articles

A Diaghilev celebration from BRB2

1 week ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Pullinger

When the London Philharmonic performed Daphnis et Chloé with a thrilling Australian circus ensemble during the Southbank’s Multitudes festival recently, a few of us wondered when we would ever see the ballet danced again.
Comic opera minus the fizz: Telemann makes his Royal Opera debut

1 week ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Pullinger

What do you like to do during the interval of an opera? A glass of fizz at the bar? Enjoy an ice-cream or sorbet? The 80-minute interval after Act 2 of Die Walküre currently running at the Royal Opera House even allows for supper in a nearby restaurant (pre-booking recommended). Early in the 18th century, however, you could indulge in a musical interlude – or intermezzo – between acts of an opera seria.
Wagner: Walküre at Royal Opera House | Live Review

1 week ago | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Pullinger

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Barrie Kosky's production of Die Walküre, The Royal Opera (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)It was nearly 20 months ago that the curtain came down on Das Rheingold, launching The Royal Opera’s new Ring cycle.
Flight of Icarus: perception-altering Shostakovich from Serebrennikov and Petrenko

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Pullinger

“How much will it change your perception of the piece?” asked Vasily Petrenko, challenging the audience ahead of this “visual imagining” of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. That, Vasily, is a very good question. This Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concert featured the second Shostakovich symphony to be given the big screen treatment within four days, part of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival where their resident orchestras entertain genre-crossing twists.
Oh To Believe in Another World: Shostakovich and Stalin on film

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Pullinger

Shostakovich knew a thing or two about writing for cinema. He composed over 30 film scores and, in his youth, earned money improvising piano accompaniments for silent films. Of his fifteen symphonies, the Eleventh – sometimes dubbed “a film score without a film” – is subtitled “The Year 1905”, depicting Bloody Sunday at St Petersburg’s Winter Palace in cinematic detail.
Beyond Stalin’s Shadow: Andris Nelsons’ bumper Boston box of Shostakovich

3 weeks ago | canzonetta.substack.com | Mark Pullinger

“Shostakovich’s music is, of course, connected to everything that was happening around him – Stalin, Hitler, all these disastrous things,” Andris Nelsons told Philip Clark in a Gramophone interview (8/15) launching his Shostakovich series on Deutsche Grammophon.
Postcard from Vienna

3 weeks ago | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Pullinger

Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the StaatsoperAlthough born in Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart looms large over Vienna. He lived in at least a dozen addresses in the city and spent his most productive years there. His home in Domgasse (1784-87), where he composed Le nozze di Figaro, is the only Mozart residence still intact in Vienna, now the Mozarthaus museum. Mozart is commemorated by a statue in the Burggarten, just a stone’s throw away from the Staatsoper.
On top of the chamber music world: Wigmore Hall’s John Gilhooly

3 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Pullinger

“I felt on top of the world. He’s only 21 years old. It’s astonishing.” I meet John Gilhooly the day after watching pianist Yunchan Lim’s second recital of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Wigmore Hall in under 24 hours. Both played to packed houses. The Artistic and Executive Director is riding a high, having recently announced the hall’s 125th anniversary season. We’re each clutching season brochures in his eyrie of an office, but can’t resist reflecting on Yunchan.
Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina at Salzburg Easter Festival | Live Review

1 month ago | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Pullinger

⭐⭐⭐ (Daniel Okulitch (Schaklowityi) Credit: Tom Visser Design)'The past in the present – this is my task.' Modest Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, subtitled a ‘national music drama’, is no sweeping historical epic, but a sombre meditation on Russian history. It’s a world of conflict, both political (the title means ‘The Khovansky Affair’) and religious, distilling violent uprisings, unrest and gloom in late 17th-century Russia.
Britten: Peter Grimes at Welsh National Opera | Live Review

1 month ago | gramophone.co.uk | Mark Pullinger

⭐⭐⭐⭐Nicky Spence in Peter Grimes at Welsh National Opera (Photo: Dafydd Owen) There are many ways to play Peter Grimes and there are many types of tenor who can sing the role, from the light lyric Peter Pears, its creator, to the rough-hewn Heldentenor of Jon Vickers, whose interpretation Britten reportedly hated. The range has stayed wide: Philip Langridge and Alan Oke at the lighter end to Wagnerians Ben Heppner and Stuart Skelton.