Reviews, Blogs, Podcasts
Like many avid record collectors my first awareness of Michael Tilson Thomas were the Deutsche Grammophon recordings which arrived in the wake of his appointment as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the age of just 24. As recipient of the Koussevitsky Prize in 1969 it was almost a foregone conclusion. The word [Read More]
Monday 7 September 2026 6.30pm Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zedel Comparing Notes brings stars of the West End and Broadway to Crazy Coqs, Live at Zedel. In a lively and informal mix of performance and conversation host Edward Seckerson will be getting up close and personal with these musical theatre luminaries and emerging stars, exploring the [Read More]
Hugely impressed by Ava Bahari here. She is truly a storyteller. There is untold generosity and cleanness to the playing and the best way I can express what sets apart her reading of this oft-performed piece is the value with which she imbues every note, be it part of a singing phrase or a driving [Read More]
Wednesday 29 July 2026 6.30pm Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zedel Comparing Notes brings stars of the West End and Broadway to Crazy Coqs, Live at Zedel. In a lively and informal mix of performance and conversation host Edward Seckerson will be getting up close and personal with these musical theatre luminaries and emerging stars, exploring the [Read More]
Two mythical birds the one immortalised by Villa-Lobos Uirapuru an endangered species in our musical universe. All kudos to Dudamel for realising the songful connections with it and Stravinsky’s Firebird and rejoicing in them so wholeheartedly. They were written within a decade of each other and you might even say that in [Read More]
This wonderful score is such a good fit for Dudamel’s sleek Los Angeleans. There is what I would call a tinge of Americana about Prokofiev’s big lyric melodies in this of all his pieces and within a few bars of the ballet’s intriguingly understated opening pages the Los Angeles Philharmonic violins are overheating in ways [Read More]
A centenary conversation celebrating a great conductor and an outstanding Mahlerian The conductor Klaus Tennstedt was born on June 6, 1926. After his arrival from East Germany to the West, he held chief conductor posts with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg (1979-81), and with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1983-87), with whom he recorded extensively, [Read More]
Fresh off their run as Eurydice and Orpheus in the West End’s Hadestown, Desmonda Cathabel (Mamma Mia: I Have a Dream, Miss Saigon, Disney’s Aladdin) and Dylan Wood (Orphans, Moorcroft, No Love Songs) are no strangers to playing doomed lovers together. “Wood’s chemistry with Desmonda Cathabel’s Eurydice is mesmerising.” — Musical Theatre Review “Her chemistry [Read More]
Writer, Broadcaster and Presenter EDWARD SECKERSON was one of the last journalists to interview the legendary Leonard Bernstein less than a year before he died in 1990. A passionate, some might say fanatical, advocate of Bernstein’s exceptional talents as a conductor, composer and teacher, Seckerson has championed the Bernstein cause over many years now, winning [Read More]
Marti Webb is renowned for her leading roles in West End musicals. She gained prominence through performances in productions such as Evita , in which she played the role of Eva Perón from 1979, and Tell Me on a Sunday , a one- woman show specifically written for her by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don [Read More]