Stream of Tears (Iberian roots): The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall

Marian devotion in the New World was the focus of this concert by The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall.  Perhaps it was coincidental that it happened to be Mother’s Day in…

St John Passion: devotion and drama from Mark Padmore and the OAE

J.S. Bach’s two settings of the Passion of Christ are soaring manifestations of early modern Lutheran devotion, profound meditations on suffering (from the Latin verb, patior, meaning ‘to suffer, bear…

Royal Opera House announces special fundraising concerts and stream for Ukraine 

Today, the Royal Opera House unveils a series of fundraising initiatives in support of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.     On Good Friday 15 April 2022, at 4.30pm, Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv joins Music Director of The…

Louise Alder and Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall

Louise Alder’s lunchtime recital at Wigmore Hall, with pianist Joseph Middleton, was almost operatic in its scope and emotional energy.  And, Alder showed her fearlessness by opening her programme with…

Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House

“What harbour shelters peace, away from tidal waves, away from storms?”  The opening moments of Deborah Warner’s new production of Britten’s Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House make it…

Bampton Classical Opera to perform Haydn’s Il mondo della luna

Bampton Classical Opera’s summer 2022 production will be Haydn’s Il mondo della luna. This three-act dramma giocosa from 1777 is the best-known of several operatic settings during the second half of the century of…

A brilliant Hansel and Gretel from Stephen Barlow and the Royal College of Music

The escalating cost of living crisis may soon result in many children in the UK sharing Hansel’s hunger pangs: ‘O Gret, it would be such a treat, if we had…

A Twitcher’s Delight: Roderick Williams and Andrew West at Milton Court

A serious birdwatcher would take exception to being called a twitcher.  Whereas the former is happy to wait patiently and passively for avian visitors to visit their locale, twitchers chase…

The cock crows: English Touring Opera presents Rimsky-Korsakov’s satire on incompetent autocracy

Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1907 fantasy-fable, The Golden Cockerel, brings together folklore and fact, angling Pushkin’s 1834 surreal satire on a Russian autocracy led by Nicholas I towards the Tsarist regime of Nicholas…

Origin: This is CLS

In 1971, the year in which he made his professional debut as a conductor, the late Richard Hickox founded the Richard Hickox Orchestra and the Richard Hickox Chorus, and commissioned…