Page 184 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK
P. 184
the arts desk
27 December 2021
reviews, news & interviews
Best of 2021: Classical music concerts
Big orchestral works returned with impressive panache, but for how
long?
by David Nice
Full Mahler: Robin Ticciati conducting the LPO on the Glyndebourne stage in the most theatrical of
concertsRichard Hubert Smith
As the catastrophe unfolded in 2020, it seemed reasonable to speculate that the
biggest orchestral works – Mahler and Shostakovich symphonies, Strauss tone
poems among them – probably wouldn’t be heard live in our concert halls for years.
Yet see how adaptable and uncrushable our great performing artists are. Following
four and a half months of mostly scaled-down or middle-range opuses streamed
online, the London orchestras adapted with alacrity. Simon Rattle welcomed an
audience back into the Barbican, wondering at “that sound you make with your
hands” for a nicely-tailored London Symphony Orchestra programme starting with the
