Marin Alsop made a spectacular debut with the London Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall in London in January. The rapport between Alsop and the orchestra was immediate, and was strengthened when she was asked back to replace Myung-Whun Chung at short notice, again in the Royal Festival Hall, just one month later. As we go to press she returns again to London – this time to the Barbican Centre to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with soloist Louis Lortie in a Shostakovich/Rachmaninov programme. “New York-born conductor Marin Alsop made such a mark on London audiences last year with her performances of contemporary music, that one wondered just what she might be like in the mainstream repertoire. Thanks to the LPO, we had the chance to find out – and the results can only be described as very impressive… Alsop also showed her prowess in works by Brahms and Tchaikovsky …fabulously unnerving insights… She got the balance of elements in [Brahms’] First Symphony absolutely right, instilling a remark-able cogency and homogeneity of mood into a work which can sometimes seem an episodic collection of movements rather than an integrated whole. The LPO were superlative here, too. In an era when great Brahms interpreters are a bit thin on the ground, Alsop is well on her way to becoming one of the best” The Guardian, January 2000