Richard Bratby

Richard Bratby is the chief classical music critic of The Spectator

Barbara Hannigan needs to stop conducting while singing

Last week, Barbara Hannigan conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Haydn, Roussel, Ravel and Britten, though to be honest she had me at Haydn. It’s still relatively unusual to encounter him in a symphonic concert, and more than one promoter has told me that Haydn is ‘box office poison’, which is a shocking description of

A luminous new recording of The Dream of Gerontius

Grade: A– There’s a species of music-lover who enjoys pointing out that Elgar isn’t played much on the Continent – the musical equivalent of those social media bores who pop up each April to reveal that Saint George was Turkish, ackshully. It’s all rot, of course. Some of the best Elgar performances of recent years

Regents Opera’s Ring is a formidable achievement

I saw the world end in a Bethnal Green leisure centre. Regents Opera’s Ring cycle, which began in 2022 in Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden, has found its culmination and completion at York Hall, a rundown public bath better known for championship boxing. Tower Hamlets security staff scan you for concealed weapons on the way

Want to understand a conductor? Listen to their Haydn

Grade: B When a music-lover is tired of Haydn’s London symphonies, they’re tired of life. It’s not just the sheer creative verve of these 12 symphonies by a composer in his sixties. It’s the generosity of spirit. Beethoven demands a battle of wills; Mozart a near-impossible grace. But a conductor can run straight at a

The thankless art of the librettist

Next week, after the première of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera Festen, the cast and conductor will take their bow. All being well, there’ll be applause; and then a brief lull as the creative team takes the stage. There’s often a ripple of curiosity in the audience at this point, because it’s rare that we get

Classical music has much to learn from Liverpool

They do things their own way in Liverpool; they always have. In 1997 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra launched a contemporary music group called Ensemble 10:10 (the name came from the post-concert time-slot of their early performances). For a decade now, they’ve also administered the Rushworth Prize, an annual competition for young composers based in

The stupidity of the classical piano trio

It’s a right mess, the classical piano trio; the unintended consequence of one of musical history’s more frustrating twists. When the trio first evolved, in the age of Haydn, the piano (or at any rate, its frail domestic forebear) was the junior partner, and the two string instruments, violin and cello, were added to make

A miracle at the RSC: genuinely funny Shakespeare

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Most subsidised theatres hanker for political relevance. Even so, when the Royal Shakespeare Company planned its new production of Twelfth Night, they can hardly have expected that by Christmas 2024 we’d have Malvolio as prime minister. The curious thing is

Meet the king of comic opera 

John Savournin has been busy. That comes with the territory for a classical singer – things often get a little hectic as the music world barrels towards Christmas. But with Savournin, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of which theatre – which city – he’s in on any given night. ‘This week has been Pirates

Vivid, noble and bouyant: AAM’s Messiah reviewed

More than a thousand musicians took part when Handel’s Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey in May 1791. It wasn’t the only item on the bill, either; it was part of a day-long blow-out that lasted from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and also included the whole of Handel’s Israel in Egypt. The crowd came

Spellbinding: Herbert Blomstedt’s Mahler 9 reviewed

Ivor Cutler called silence the music of the cognoscenti. But there’s silence and there’s silence, and a regular concertgoer hears a fair bit of both. The ability to fold silence into a musical line – to create the impression that a conductor is somehow sculpting a sound which doesn’t exist – is an indicator of

A keeper: ENO’s new The Elixir of Love reviewed

There was some light booing on the first night of English National Opera’s The Elixir of Love, but it was the good kind – the friendly kind, aimed not at the baritone Dan D’Souza but his character, the caddish charmer Belcore. In other words, it was what opera snobs call ‘pantomime booing’, and which, as

Fails to ignite: Royal Opera’s Tales of Hoffmann reviewed

I couldn’t love anyone who didn’t love Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Everything – everything – is stacked against this opera. Offenbach left the score unfinished when he died, tormented with gout and pilloried by bores, at the age of 61. Some of its best-loved numbers were upcycled from his earlier hits, and at least

One beauty – one turkey: Wexford Festival Opera reviewed

‘Theatre within Theatre’ was the theme of the 2024 Wexford Festival and with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s The Critic, that’s exactly what you get. Conor Hanratty’s production showed the interior of an 18th-century theatre, viewed from the stage. In the second act it flipped around to reveal the audience’s perspective. Were we now the audience?