1 Martha Argerich And Daniel Barenboim
Two of the supreme musicians of our age were child prodigies in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, and they have remained good friends ever since. Argerich (pictured) makes a rare London appearance in the first of Barenboim’s Proms this year; she is the soloist in Liszt’s first piano concerto, before Barenboim conducts the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in extracts from Wagner operas.
2 Daniil Trifonov
Perhaps the most gifted of the brilliant current generation of twentysomething pianists, Trifonov has become an Edinburgh regular in recent years. He’s now graduated to the Usher Hall for his solo recital, which is built around two of the most technically challenging works in the piano repertoire: Liszt’s Grandes Etudes De Paganini and Rachmaninov’s first piano sonata.
3 The Makropulos Affair
The BBC Symphony Orchestra have made a feature of their operas in concert in recent years. One of the highlights of last winter was Jenůfa, and they have assembled the same team for another great Janáček opera at the Proms, his tragicomic meditation on existence and mortality.
4 Das Rheingold
Edinburgh would have done well to have invited Opera North to bring its much acclaimed concert staging of The Ring to this year’s festival. Instead, it has opted for a concert performance of just the first instalment of Wagner’s epic from the Mariinsky Opera under Valery Gergiev. It’s likely to be pretty good, but the company has toured its cycle several times in Britain over the last decade.
