A full house at London’s Cadogan Hall greeted the Hong Kong Philharmonic last week for their performance of music by Fung Lam, Beethoven and Prokofiev as part of the hall’s 2014-15 International Orchestra Series. In London’s crowded concert schedule, the

(Berliner Staatsoper im Schillertheater – 22 February 2015) It’s just another Sunday night in February at a Berlin opera house: Wolfgang Schaeuble, German Finance Minister, sits in the stalls with his wife and without visible security two days after negotiating

Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) is an opera with unusually extensive chorus segments. And Director Tim Albery’s production at the Royal Opera House puts the chorus to unusually good use. Enthusiastic, dramatically intense and vocally polished, this

At a time when rumours of Sir Simon Rattle returning to the UK, no less to head the London Symphony Orchestra, were running thick and fast, it was no surprise that I found myself in a sold-out Barbican Hall, preparing

The Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden pulled off a real coup. Carefully marketing the orchestra’s first ever Rheingold, the first of the four operas of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle that the orchestra is spacing out over four years