Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella is most remarkable for one reason and one reason alone: It was composed by a 12-year old girl.
Month: December 2017
French orientalism : songs and arias, Sabine Devieilhe
Mirages : visions of the exotic East, a selection of French opera arias and songs from Sabine Devieilhe, with Alexandre Tharaud and Les SiËcles conducted by FranÁois-Xavier Roth, new from Erato
La Cenerentola in Lyon
Like Stendhal when he first saw Rossini’s Cenerentola in Trieste in 1823, I was left stone cold by Rossini’s Cendrillon last night in Lyon. Stendhal complained that in Trieste nothing had been left to the imagination. As well, in Lyon nothing, absolutely nothing was left to the imagination.
Messiah, who?: The Academy of Ancient Music bring old and new voices together
Christmas isn’t Christmas without a Messiah. And, at the Barbican Hall, the Academy of Ancient Music reminded us why … while never letting us settle into complacency.
The Golden Cockerel Bedazzles in Amsterdam
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale The Golden Cockerel was this
holiday season’s ZaterdagMatinee operatic treat at the Concertgebouw. There
was real magic to this concert performance, chiefly thanks to Vasily
Petrenko’s dazzling conducting and the enchanting soprano Venera Gimadieva.
Mahler Das Lied von der Erde, London – Rattle, O’Neill, Gerhaher
By pairing Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (Simon O’Neill, Christian Gerhaher) with Strauss Metamorphosen, Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra were making a truly powerful statement. The Barbican performance last night was no ordinary concert. This performance was extraordinary because it carried a message.
David McVicar’s Rigoletto returns to the ROH
This was a rather disconcerting performance of David McVicar’s 2001 production of Rigoletto. Not only because of the portentous murkiness with which Paule Constable’s lighting shrouds designer Michael Vale’s ramshackle scaffolding; nor, the fact that stage and pit frequently seemed to be tugging in different directions. But also, because some of the cast seemed rather out of sorts.
Verdi Otello, Bergen – Stuart Skelton, Latonia Moore, Lester Lynch
Verdi Otello livestream from Norway with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Garner with a superb cast, led by Stuart Skelton, Latonia Moore, and Lester Lynch and a good cast, with four choirs, the Bergen Philharmonic Chorus, the Edvard Grieg Kor, Collegi˚m M˚sic˚m Kor, the Bergen pikekor and Bergen guttekor (Children’s Choruses) with chorus master HÂkon Matti Skrede. The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1765, just a few years after the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra : Scandinavian musical culture has very strong roots, and is thriving still. Tucked away in the far north, Bergen may be a hidden treasure, but, as this performance proved, it’s world class.
Temple Winter Festival: the Gesualdo Six
‘Gaudete, gaudete!’ – Rejoice, rejoice! – was certainly the underlying spirit of this lunchtime concert at Temple Church, part of the 5th Temple Winter Festival. Whether it was vigorous joy or peaceful contemplation, the Gesualdo Six communicate a reassuring and affirmative celebration of Christ’s birth in a concert which fused medieval and modern concerns, illuminating surprising affinities.
Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida at the Wigmore Hall
The journey is always the same, and never the same. As Ian Bostridge remarks, at the end of his prize-winning book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, when the wanderer asks Der Leiermann, “Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”, in the final song of Winterreise, the ‘crazy but logical procedure would be to go right back to the beginning of the whole cycle and start all over again’.