The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge has built an unassailable reputation for the quality of its recordings. Amongst the discs under the choir’s ex Director of Music Stephen Layton, there…
Author: David Truslove
A remarkable Duke Bluebeard’s Castle from ENO
It would be hard to imagine greater stress levels on the morning of the opening night of English National Opera’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle when soprano Allison Cook, scheduled to sing…
An Enchanting, Must-See Magic Flute from ENO
Entertainment does not come much more laugh-out-loud than English National Opera’s current run of The Magic Flute, now in its third revival, and notwithstanding recent machinations over the company’s future.…
Benjamin Britten’s Canticles at the Temple Church
This first vocal recital of the year at the Temple Church featured all five of Britten’s Canticles, works spanning nearly three decades and closely connected to the operas from the…
Tosca returns to the Royal Opera House
For a successful theatre production to work well, Puccini once asserted, there were three fixed laws. He claimed these should be a necessity ‘to interest, to surprise, to move’. This…
The Handmaid’s Tale returns to English National Opera
Nearly upended by a proposed strike from ENO musicians, which was averted for the opening night, the revival of this production of Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale, first unveiled in…
Powerful performances from The English Concert at the Wigmore Hall
Works written for performance in Hanover, Rome and London featured in this all-Handel programme given by the English Concert. The evening’s second half was taken up by Dixit Dominus, dating…
Delius: A Mass of Life
‘The status attained by Frederick Delius as a composer ensures for every new work from his pen the respectful attention of all classes of musicians. In the case of a…
Lawrence Foster conducts Kodály and Bartók on Pentatone
In a tribute essay to Kodály in the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival programme Benjamin Britten suggested, ‘There can be no composer of our century who has done more for the musical…
An imaginative disc of French sacred song from Ad Fontes
This recent compilation for solo voice, harp and organ is a delightful tour d’horizon of songs referencing the Virgin Mary, with works written by those associated with the French organist-composer…