John Butt and the Dunedin Consort’s 2012 recording of Bach’s St John Passion was ground-breaking for it putting the passion into the context of a reconstruction of the original Lutheran Vespers service.
Month: August 2017
Collision: Spectra Ensemble at the Arcola Theatre
‘Asteroid flyby in October: A drill for the end of the world?’ So shouted a headline in USA Today earlier this month, as journalist Doyle Rice asked, ‘Are we ready for an asteroid impact?’ in his report that in October NASA will conduct a drill to see how well its planetary defence system would work if an actual asteroid were heading straight for Earth.
Joshua Bell offers Hispanic headiness at the Proms
At the start of the 20th century, French composers seemed to be conducting a cultural love affair with Spain, an affair initiated by the Universal Exposition of 1889 where the twenty-five-year old Debussy and the fourteen-year-old Ravel had the opportunity to hear new sounds from East Asia, such as the Javanese gamelan, alongside gypsy flamenco from Granada.
John Joubert’s Jane Eyre
Librettists have long mined the literature shelves for narratives that are ripe for musico-dramatic embodiment. On the whole, it’s the short stories and poems – The Turn of the Screw, Eugene Onegin or Death in Venice, for example – that best lend themselves to operatic adaptation.
Hibiki: a European premiere by Mark-Anthony Turnage at the Proms
Hibiki: sound, noise, echo, reverberation, harmony. Commissioned by the Suntory Hall in Tokyo to celebrate the Hall’s 30th anniversary in 2016, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 50-minute Hibiki, for two female soloists, children’s chorus and large orchestra, purports to reflect on the ‘human reverberations’ of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011 and the devastation caused by the subsequent tsunami and radioactive disaster.
Through Life and Love: Louise Alder sings Strauss
Soprano Louise Alder has had an eventful few months. Declared ‘Young Singer of the Year’ at the 2017 International Opera Awards in May, the following month she won the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.
Jan·?ek: The Diary of One Who Disappeared, Grimeborn
A great performance of Jan·?ek’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared can be, allowing for the casting of a superb tenor, an experience on a par with Schoenberg’s Erwartung. That Shadwell Opera’s minimalist, but powerful, staging in the intimate setting of Studio 2 of the Arcola Theatre was a triumph was in no small measure to the magnificent singing of the tenor, Sam Furness.
Khovanshchina: Mussorgsky at the Proms
Remembering the centenary of the Russian Revolution, this Proms performance of Mussorgsky’s mighty Khovanshchina (all four and a quarter hours of it) exceeded all expectations on a musical level. And, while the trademark doorstop Proms opera programme duly arrived containing full text and translation, one should celebrate the fact that – finally – we had surtitles on several screens.
Santa Fe: Entertaining If Not Exactly (R)evolutionary
You know what I loved best about Santa Fe Opera’s world premiere The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs?
Longborough Young Artists in London: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
For the last three years, Longborough Festival Opera’s repertoire of choice for their Young Artist Programme productions has been Baroque opera seria, more specifically Handel, with last year’s Alcina succeeding Rinaldo in 2014 and Xerxes in 2015.