Solstice: VOCES8 & The Aeolians

The candles were in place; the rose blush lighting spread a warm glow in St Anne and St Agnes Church; mezzo-soprano Katie Jeffries-Harris was back from ‘self-isolation’; and, the semi-circle…

Britten: A Ceremony of Carols – Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

It’s a bold director who decides to explore Benjamin Britten’s smaller and relatively minor choral repertoire alongside the seldom recorded SATB version of A Ceremony of Carols. As the booklet…

Joachim Raff: Benedetto Marcello

Here’s yet another very effective German opera post-Weber but not by Wagner! We hear and see so few of these! I was quite taken in the past two years with…

A Guardian Angel: VOCES8 open their Live from London – Christmas festival

Sixteen concerts over five weeks, 280 artists, a ‘Young Singers’ spotlight featuring singers from the UK, US Germany and Singapore, and six newly commissioned works.  VOCES8’s Live from London –…

Dmytro Popov: Hymns of Love

Two years ago, the Ukrainian tenor Dmytro Popov wooed the audience at Wigmore Hall with Russian romances, in a recital (with the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Justina Gringytė) of songs by Tchaikovsky,…

Separation and Reconciliation: Opera Scenes presented by the Royal College of Music Opera Studio

‘Separation and reconciliation’: a fitting way to sum up the experience of many of us during the past months.  And, also, the theme which united the Opera Scenes – drawn…