ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Dua Lipa (Live From The Royal Albert Hall): Missed the gig? Here's the next best thing..

With the touring circuit now enjoying a post-pandemic boom, live albums are back in vogue. The Mail’s music critic rounds up the current crop.

DUA LIPA

Live From The Royal Albert Hall (Warner) 

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Accompanied by an orchestra, band, backing singers and a burgundy-suited Elton John — who arrived for an encore of Cold Heart (Pnau Remix) — Dua dazzled as she headlined the Royal Albert Hall for the first time in October. The show has since yielded an ITV special (still available on ITVX) and now a live album, out on double vinyl (£40), CD (£12) and digitally.

The concert focused on this year’s Radical Optimism LP. Greeted with a lukewarm response on its release in May, its dance bangers took on fresh life in a symphonic setting. End Of An Era, co-written with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, assumed the mantle of a 1970s-style Philadelphia soul anthem. Piano ballad Anything For Love was sung with drama and poise.

A number of glaring omissions, including the singles Physical, Break My Heart and New Rules, meant that the show fell short of being a career-spanning spectacular. But pop’s most glamorous It Girl, despite shying away from soul-baring revelations onstage, is an unstoppable force. You wonder what she’ll do next. A Bond theme, perhaps?

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

Symphony Of Lungs (UMC) 

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The grandeur of the Royal Albert Hall was also the perfect setting for Florence Welch to reinvent her gothic debut album, Lungs, as a symphonic suite. Backed by Jules Buckley’s orchestra, the theatrical diva was in her element at her BBC Prom. Available to watch on iPlayer, it’s also out as a digital album, with a CD (£14) and double vinyl LP (£40) coming in March.

The excellent acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall can amplify any vocal flaws, but Welch rose to the occasion. Playing the album in full, she added four B-Side tracks to make this a substantial, as well as stylish, show. 

DEF LEPPARD

One Night Only: Live At The Leadmill (Mercury Studios) 

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Ahead of a tour that saw them visit Wembley Stadium and Bramall Lane — home of frontman Joe Elliott’s beloved Sheffield United — guitar giants Def Leppard played a benefit concert in Sheffield’s Leadmill nightclub, one of many UK grassroots music venues currently facing an uncertain future.

The gig in front of just 850 fans has now been immortalised on a live album available on CD (£13), double vinyl (£36), DVD/CD (£20) and Blu-ray/CD (£22).

Leppard are heavy metal heroes, but there’s a pop edge to their sound, too. They once played a show in Nashville with Taylor Swift, and highlights of this hour-long album include the pop-metal crossover hit Pour Some Sugar On Me and a version of glam rock band Sweet’s 1975 single Action.  

TEARS FOR FEARS

Songs For A Nervous Planet (Concord) 

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Live albums are getting more innovative. This one is a hybrid, combining a Tears For Fears gig from Tennessee with four new songs recorded in the studio. It’s out as a double CD (£15), double LP (£32) and digitally.

Bath duo Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were portrayed as a po-faced synth-pop band when they emerged in the 1980s with singles like Mad World and Pale Shelter (both included here), but they’ve matured into an accomplished live act: their slick wall of sound blends electronics with traditional rock guitars and keyboards.

There are songs here from 2022’s The Tipping Point, plus older singalongs including Everybody Wants To Rule The World and Shout. Woman In Chains, from 1989’s Seeds Of Love, is a slow-burning centrepiece. Of the new tracks, Astronaut is a stunning ballad, and The Girl That I Call Home a love song dedicated to Roland’s wife Emily.  

WHITNEY HOUSTON

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The Concert For A New South Africa (Legacy) 

Remastered to mark the 30th anniversary of Houston’s 1994 tour of South Africa — the first visit by a major Western star in the post-apartheid era — this album captures Whitney in her prime. A film of the gig, from Durban, was shown in UK cinemas in October, and an edited version is now out on CD (£14) and double vinyl (£36).

Highlights abound, with Whitney’s sky-scraping voice hitting the high notes on Saving All My Love For You, before a finale featuring tracks from her 1992 soundtrack to The Bodyguard: a funky cover of Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman and a ten-minute take on I Will Always Love You.

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Best Classical Albums of 2024

By Tully Potter for the Daily Mail 

Dvorak: Symphonies 7, 8 & 9

(Pentatone PTC 5187 216, two CDs)

It seems Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic can do no wrong, and this set of Dvorak’s last three symphonies is typical of their finely-wrought work.

The orchestra could play this music in their sleep but it needs a firm hand to steer the players through the gorgeous melodies and inject life into this most spontaneous of composers.

The Seventh Symphony was written for London and had a great success, perhaps because it contains a few lingering influences of Brahms, Dvorak’s great sponsor and encourager.

The Eighth is the most Dvorakian and not every interpreter tunes into its ‘native wood-notes wild’; but the CPO’s wonderfully rustic winds conjure up Bohemia’s woods and fields.

The Ninth, ‘From the New World’, distils spirituals, pangs of homesickness and the calls of Dvorak’s beloved doves – perhaps his love of trains finds its way into the powerful finale.

Bellini: I Puritani

(EuroArts 2011121, three CDs)

THE last opera Vincenzo Bellini wrote before his grotesquely untimely death at 34 used to get hacked about, but this new recording is complete.

We are in England during the Civil War and a Cavalier, Arturo, has fallen in love with the daughter of a Roundhead; but fortunately her father looks with favour on the match.

Lisette Oropesa has the right fragility for Elvira and the brilliant American tenor Lawrence Brownlee can handle Arturo’s high tessitura, even the infamous high F written for Rubini.

Some of Oropesa’s high notes are a bit ‘off’ but with a strong cast, the excellent Dresden Philharmonic and Leipzig Radio Chorus, good conducting by Riccardo Prizza and a happy ending, what more can we want?

Elgar: Violin Concerto

(Warner Classics 2173240942)

Most distinctive among today’s crop of violinists is the Norwegian Vilde Frang, and she makes something special out of Elgar’s great Violin Concerto.

She adds about six minutes to Albert Sammons’s legendary 1929 recording, just reissued on the Biddulph label, but she really knows how to use the extra space she creates.

Working sympathetically with the Deutsches SO of Berlin and Glyndebourne maestro Robin Ticciati, Frang holds the massive outer movements together with consummate skill.

In between comes a heartfelt Andante, where her tone is never too thick, and the accompanied cadenza in the finale gives her an outlet for virtuosity. She offers just one ‘encore’.

Chopin: Etudes

(Decca 487 0122)

Piano enthusiasts have really been set alight by these recordings of Chopin’s 24 Etudes, Opp. 10 and 25, the debut album of Korean artist Yunchan Lim.

Only 19 when the sessions took place at Henry Wood Hall, London, a year ago, in 2022 Lim became the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn Competition in America.

His playing certainly sparkles in the faster Studies, which bristle with difficulties, but he can also cast a spell in more thoughtful pieces such as the famous E major, Op. 10 No. 3.

Lim feels that the heart of the Etudes comes in the C sharp minor, Op. 25 No. 7, and he certainly finds a special mood for that one. He is superbly recorded by the Decca team.

Boccherini: Cello Concertos etc.

(Hyperion CDA68444)

For the second time our leading cellist of the post-Du Pré era, Steven Isserlis, champions the music of Luigi Boccherini, contemporary of Haydn and Mozart.

Himself the greatest cellist of his time, Lucca-born Boccherini spent 15 years of his career in Spain, working for the King’s brother and picking up a lot of local colour.

His exceptional ear for string sonorities showed itself in more than 100 quintets with two cellos, and Isserlis includes a good example, playing first cello as Boccherini did.

There are also two Cello Sonatas here but I suspect many listeners will home in on the Cello Concertos in D and F, which are glowingly played by all the participants.