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I was only able to get to live music for less than three months of this year, but among the few events that I did attend was one of the most remarkable operatic premieres I\u2019ve heard in more than 40 years. Commissioned by the Royal Opera, and based on the movie and stage play of the same name by Thomas Vinterberg, Festen<\/a> was Mark-Anthony Turnage\u2019s fifth large-scale opera, and showed vividly how the sure dramatic instincts revealed in his earliest stage works, Greek and The Silver Tassie, have matured into an operatic language of immense power and flexibility. Not a word of Lee Hall\u2019s libretto is wasted in revealing the dark family secrets that are exposed at a 60th birthday party, while Turnage\u2019s wonderfully varied, unsparing score never makes a false step. The horror of the drama was remorselessly focused by Richard Jones\u2019s production, with a cast in which every role was made horribly believable. The best British opera in half a century? Probably. Andrew Clements<\/strong><\/p>\n Some highlights are more predictable than others. The Australian Chamber Orchestra has now been wowing audiences for half a century, with Richard Tognetti its maverick leader for 35 years. But not even that track record could prepare me for the raw vitality of the ACO\u2019s latest UK outing at the Barbican in March<\/a> with a programme of Bach, Shostakovich and Gubaidulina. The concert began as these world-class string players were still walking on, their balance of technical control and creative freedom utterly gripping from the first contact of bow on string. A few months later, the Aldeburgh festival provided my year\u2019s most memorable discovery, when the Gildas Quartet premiered Colin Matthews\u2019 String Quartet No 6<\/a> alongside Bridge\u2019s Three Idylls and Beethoven\u2019s third \u201cRazumovsky\u201d quartet. It\u2019s the latter that has stayed with me above all \u2013 such a riot of colour and intense freshness that it felt like another first performance. Flora Willson<\/strong><\/p>\nBeethoven with a riot of colour and freshness<\/h2>\n
Invigorating Jan\u00e1\u010dek and spellbinding Wagner<\/h2>\n