Bernstein’s Candide has been through innumerable versions since the work’s disastrous premiere on Broadway in 1956, and in many ways, it remains a sequence of songs in search of a…
Category: Reviews
England Under the Tudors: The Marian Consort at Ightham Mote
Now in its twelfth year, the Music@Malling Festival presents concerts and events in historic venues in and around West Malling in Kent, and the Marian Consort invited us to the…
Antony and Cleopatra in San Francisco
A John Adams premiere is about the biggest news event the opera world can generate. Here’s the news from San Francisco. Antony and Cleopatra is the first opera John Adams…
A due voci: Iestyn Davies and Hugh Cutting at Wigmore Hall
This truly lovely recital represented the fruits of the introduction of the basso continuo at the end of the sixteenth century, which liberated polyphonic voices from their fundamental harmonic role…
Welsh National Opera’s The Makropulos Affair: a magnificent achievement
The question of why we should crave immortality is central to Janáček’s penultimate opera. As a composer he defied old bones and enjoyed an Indian summer, finding recognition during his…
Stanford: Children’s Songs – a generous, involving recital by Kitty Whately and Gareth Brynmor John
In 1906, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) published The National Song Book, a collection of folk-songs, carols and rounds. In an address to a musical society in 1917, Arthur Somervell –…
Haute-couture opera with an industrial vibe: Costanzo, Handel and Glass at London’s Printworks
If one places in context where this program of Handel and Glass took place – the old and the contemporary – its historic setting seemed to have a real sense…
Characterful Mahler from Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth and Sabine Devieilhe
Harmonia mundi’s recent disc of Mahler’s 4th Symphony provides a remarkably flowing and vivid account, fashioning a new perspective on a much-recorded work. Inner detail is heard afresh with instruments…
The Unravelling Fantasia of Miss H: a powerful operatic tribute to Mary Frances Heaton
She stood up one Sunday in St George’s church, the parish church of Doncaster, and interrupted the sermon, accusing the preacher of being “a whited sepulchre, a thief, a villain,…
The Trocs go to the opera? Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie with five countertenors at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival
This was a brilliantly theatrical and superbly sung recreation of an opera reflecting the work’s premiere by an all-male cast. Max Emanuel Cencic’s Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival takes place in…