On the surface this new disc from the Choir of King’s College Cambridge presents mainly standard repertoire for Holy Week and Easter. Some might consider the compilation a little too…
Category: Reviews
London Handel Festival at St John’s Smith Square
On Wednesday 14 April 2022, two London festivals came together when the London Handel Festival brought a programme of Baroque sacred music to St John’s Smith Square’s Easter Festival. Adrian…
Impressive Mahler from Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic
Any new recording from Semyon Bychkov is to be eagerly anticipated, not least the launch of this first disc in a new Mahler cycle, a recent collaboration with Pentatone. Judging…
The Handmaid’s Tale at English National Opera
‘I don’t want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don’t want to be a doll hung up on…
Pacific Opera Project Iolanta: Love Is Blind
Estimable Pacific Opera Project (POP) does not always take such bold, bald chances as it has with producing the West Coast staged premiere of Tchaikovsky’s long one act, Iolanta. Far…
Technically accomplished Marian Consort at Turner Sims
In a concert that could have been titled ‘Towards Bach’, the Marian Consort fashioned a themed programme that linked two towering German composers: Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. They…
London Handel Festival: Opera Settecento perform Fernando, re di Castiglia
This London Handel Festival performance at St George’s Hanover Square was billed as ‘Fernando, re di Castiglia: A Handel Premiere’. Well, not quite, one might say: the first staged revival…
Angel Blue excels as Violetta at the Royal Opera House
Another revival of Richard Eyre’s seemingly timeless production of La traviata (first unveiled in 1994) has returned to the Royal Opera House. It provides a further opportunity to hear yet…
A truthful Winterreise from Ian Bostridge and Angela Hewitt at Wigmore Hall
Wunderlicher AlterSoll ich mit dir gehn?Willst zu meinen LiedernDeine Leier drehn? [Strange old man!Shall I go with you?Will you grind your hurdy-gurdyto my songs?] If the answer to the wanderer’s…
Blow’s Venus and Adonis: the Early Opera Company at St John’s Smith Square
Probably first performed at the London or Windsor court in 1683, John Blow’s Venus and Adonis is a thinly veiled political satire on the amorous appetites of Charles II and…