Page 325 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Gurrelieder review — a glorious racket from the London Philharmonic

I thought at first that Edward Gardner was conducting rather tamely, but I misjudged him. He
was just making sure that this monster-raving loony of late romanticism didn’t peak too early.

When it did, as the massed lungs of the London Philharmonic Choir and London Symphony

Chorus hurled out the macabre ride of the dead vassals, or in the unexpectedly optimistic finale

— when the coming of spring dispels all the gloom of a story about murder, jealousy, illicit

love, God-cursing and madness — the hairs on the back of my neck didn’t so much stand up as

bristle like an overheated electric toothbrush. As the doomed lovers, Lise Lindstrom produced
power but not enough lustrous tone while with David Butt Philip it was sometimes the reverse.

No such problems for Karen Cargill. She was majestic in the Song of the Wood Dove.

Richard Morrison

Read the full Gurrelieder review here

RLPO/Domingo Hindoyan review — a Mahler to remember

Their blood already stirred by blowing through the national anthem, the 13 extra brass players

sunk their lungs into the coruscating fanfares that launch Janacek’s Sinfonietta. The Royal

Liverpool Philharmonic’s new concert season — with Domingo Hindoyan as chief conductor —
couldn’t have got off to a more rousing start. The flutes and piccolo were almost frightening

slithering through their high-pitched runs, though Hindoyan and his players poured just as much

passion and precision over the score’s quieter moments. Notes were sustained with tender

beauty in the orchestra’s visit to Mahler land where the peak of pleasure came in the adagio’s

changing moods. Although Czech soprano Katerina Knezikova hit all the notes, she was missing
the tone of innocent wonder, an essential ingredient if the text’s purposefully child-like vision of

heaven is to have any resonance. Even so, this was still a Mahler Fourth to remember.

Geoff Brown

Read the full RLPO/Domingo Hindoyan review

● Don’t miss the best of the Proms 2022

Salome review — riveting and unseemly with a dramatic punch

David McVicar’s production of Strauss’s Salome comes with all the ingredients listed in the

foyer’s guidance notices. “This production contains violence and gore. There are instances of
nudity and implied sexual abuse.” Luckily, the revival’s success lies in the return of soprano