The programme originally planned for this Wigmore Hall recital by the ensemble, Counterpoise, might have been titled ‘Fathers and Daughters’. A new monodrama integrating speech, sprechstimme and singing, The…
Month: January 2023
Machaut’s Remede de Fortune: the Art of Music, Poetry and Love
Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune (c.1340) is at once a coming-of-age tale; a didactic work on the arts of poetry, music, rhetoric and memory; a microcosm of, and manual for, fourteenth-century…
Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion: a flawed work which isn’t all it seems
If one thinks of a classical ‘Passion’ one might not expect the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun to feature in any list of compositions. The liturgical, protestant, Passions of Bach (unfashionable…
The Owl and the Nightingale: stylish musical storytelling from the City of London Sinfonia
‘Avian invective’ is, sadly, an all-too-common dissonance on the cyber-airwaves today. But, twittering tiffs are no modern invention: the medieval bird-debate poem tradition offers rich examples of feathery squabbles, such…
In conversation with Antony Hermus
“Organised chaos!” is how the Dutch conductor Antony Hermus describes the first production rehearsal of the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos, when he chats to me from his hotel room…
Katya Kabanova: orchestral drama from the LSO and Sir Simon Rattle
Perhaps the most perfectly proportioned of Janáček’s operas, certainly one of the most emotionally and dramaturgically correct—which, in Janáček’s case, is saying quite something—Katya Kabanova has not wanted for recent…
The Sphere of Intimacy: magical miniatures from Cyrille Dubois and Christophe Rousset
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Parisian publisher Christophe Ballard, in collaboration with his son Jean-Baptiste-Christophe, undertook an ambitious artistic project to publish a new periodical, Recueils d’airs…
Echo: an exquisite new disc from Ruby Hughes
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper”, the poet Maya Angelou has written. “It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning”. These assertions may…
Glyndebourne announces it will no longer tour in 2023 following cut in Arts Council funding
Glyndebourne regrets to announce that it will no longer be able to tour as planned in 2023, following a reduction to its Arts Council England (ACE) funding for touring and…
Glyndebourne announces three Jerwood Young Artists for 2023
Glyndebourne had announced the names of three singers who will be taking part in its Jerwood Young Artists Programme in 2023. The Jerwood Young Artist Programme started in 2010 and…