Modern scholarship directed at the English Reformation composer John Sheppard (c.1515-58) has come a long way since Peter le Huray’s research during the 1960s and David Wulstan’s pioneering performances a…
Category: Reviews
Choir of Keble College, Oxford: Ave Rex Angelorum
Ancient plainchant, medieval texts and numinous harmonies form a unifying thread for this uplifting recent disc from the Choir of Keble College Oxford recorded in the warm acoustic of Buckfast…
Iestyn Davies and Arcangelo, at Wigmore Hall
I have a vague memory of having heard Iestyn Davies sing Handel’s Nine German Arias before at Wigmore Hall, perhaps ten or so years ago … but my review files…
Pagliacci: The Grange Festival
If theatre in general, and verismo opera in particular, is based on the tension between pretence and reality, art and life, this performance of Pagliacci at The Grange in leafy…
Roderick Williams joins Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé
Roderick Williams has had a busy pandemic. The last couple of weeks alone have seen the baritone joining with VOCES8 for a concert in their Live from London – Christmas…
Simon Mold: Song Cycles
As an ex-chorister of Peterborough Cathedral and varied involvement as a lay-clerk, Simon Mold has enjoyed working within the centuries-old church music tradition, affording him valuable encounters with some of…
Pauline Viardot’s Cinderella: a Christmas treat from Northern Opera Group
Pauline Viardot was the scion of a distinguished vocal dynasty. Her father, Manuel Garcia (tenor, impresario, teacher) took part in the premieres of Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra and Il barbiere…
Owen Wingrave: Grange Park Opera
In 1954, the year in which he completed The Turn of the Screw, Britten wrote to Eric Walter White that he had just read another short story by Henry James…
Schubert in the spotlight: Roderick Williams and ‘Momentum’ artists perform Schwanengesang
Led by Artistic Director Anthony Friend, Bandstand Chamber Festival, which presented a memorable series of concerts in the bandstand at Battersea Park this Summer, has returned with a Winter series.…
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…