Mark Valencia

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | Mark Valencia

Just as the finest Stradivarius needs a virtuoso to make it sing, so a crack symphony orchestra needs a conductor of skill and talent to bring it to the heights. The London Symphony Orchestra is on a roll currently, playing like angels for its former and current Chief Conductors, yet the Venezuelan maestro Gustavo Dudamel’s evening of music by Richard Strauss and Ravel was mixed, both in bag and blessing.

Mar 18, 2025 | bachtrack.com | Mark Valencia

These days, even The Royal Opera bills Mozart’s late Singspiel in Engish as The Magic Flute, but academic institutions like to honour the original German title. It was, then, Die Zauberflöte that opened this week at the Royal Academy of Music. Olivia Clarke conducted a lyrical yet zesty account of this adorable score, while the production by Jamie Manton was on the nose and off the wall. Reader, I loved it.

Mar 6, 2025 | bachtrack.com | Mark Valencia

Wagner’s three in one? No, the 40-minute sequence that filled the second half of this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert was not some late meditation on the Holy Trinity by the composer of Parsifal but, rather, a suite created by the conductor Thomas Guggeis by stringing together the Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannhäuser, the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin and the Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Feb 27, 2025 | bachtrack.com | Mark Valencia

Suspension of disbelief will only get you so far, but what Il trovatore lacks in rational storytelling it makes up for in a wash of irresistible melodies. These, however, haven’t been enough to save it from becoming the black sheep in Verdi’s middle-period flock of triumphs. The opera’s former popularity began to wane when audiences learnt to expect dramatic truthfulness as well as good tunes during a night at the opera, because Verdi’s porridge of a plot is as muddled as it is improbable.

Feb 17, 2025 | bachtrack.com | Mark Valencia

A tale of lawyers and lovers, music and magic... On one level, Janáček’s fable about a woman who outlives her natural lifespan by hundreds of years is a gothic opera of dark whimsy; on another it’s a thought-provoking meditation on the acceptance of ageing, the tenacity of greed and being careful what you wish for.