Composed in under a fortnight in 1915, Rachmaninov’s monumental All-Night Vigil is recognised as one of the most challenging works in the a cappella repertory. Alongside his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom…
Category: Reviews
Bryn Terfel and Alexander Soddy in Wagner and Bruckner with the Philharmonia
Wagner and Bruckner often make a good coupling in concerts – if they have the right conductor. Musically they can be close – but they do need to be treated…
Handel in Rome: Nardus Williams and the Dunedin Consort at Wigmore Hall
London audiences seem to have been frequently invited to travel back to Handel’s Rome of late. After In the Realms of Sorrow at Stone Nest during the London Handel Festival…
Magnificat 3: The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge
For over five centuries, the service of evensong has inspired countless musical settings of the evening canticles. Its continuing development from composers working within the Anglican tradition (and without) shows…
Hamlet at the Opéra Bastille
Versions of Shakespeare’s famed Hamlet have amused Parisian audiences for 250 years or so, though just now at the Opéra Bastille we were as amused as we were confused. Polish stage…
Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park at the Royal Northern College of Music
Jonathan Dove’s orchestral adaptation of his 2011 opera Mansfield Park (originally written for soloists and piano duet) debuted at The Grange Festival in 2017. With its cast of youthful characters, and…
Paavo Järvi’s Mahler Third: a fabulous and treasurable performance
In the wrong performance Mahler’s Third Symphony can be a burden on the listener and I have very often found this the most difficult of his symphonies to bring off…
Korngold’s The Dead City at English National Opera
When he published his novel Bruges-la-Morte, in French, in 1892, the symbolist author George Rodenbach included within the narrative dozens of black-and-white topographical photographs of the Belgian city, largely images…
A lovely, lucid Figaro at the Royal Academy of Music
La folle journée is the title of the second play in Pierre Beaumarchais’s ‘Figaro trilogy’ and, duly, the single ‘mad day’ on which the wedding of Figaro and Susanna takes…
Handel’s Scipione: the Early Opera Company close the London Handel Festival with a celebration of clemency
This year’s London Handel Festival was brought to a gracious close with a celebration of clemency, magnanimity and honour. Scipione, the ninth of the operas that Handel composed for the…