The Rossetti family, according to William Michael, in Some Reminiscences (1906), ‘were not a musical family; they had no gift in that direction … no craving to be constantly hearing…
Category: Broadcasts
An absorbing, imaginative ‘enactment’ of the St John Passion from Oxford Bach Soloists
Last April, writing in the Observer, Fiona Maddocks lamented her first Easter without the mysteries and joys of Bach. ‘This year all performances have been cancelled. Our lives have already…
Bach’s B Minor Mass: VOCES8 and the AAM on Easter Sunday
In 1818, the Swiss musician, writer and publisher Hans Georg Nägeli (1773–1836) issued a public advertisement announcing an ambitious publishing project, which would make a new Mass, that he had…
VOCES8 and the English Chamber Orchestra join forces on Good Friday to perform Bach and Fauré
For their Good Friday Live from London performance, VOCES8 joined forces with members of the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall. Barnaby Smith had moved from his countertenor’s perch to…
Fatma Said and Joseph Middleton open Leeds Lieder’s spring festival with ravishing Ravel
“Asie, Asie, Asie. Vieux pays merveilleux des contes …” At the start of Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Tristan Klingsor’s Arabian princess proffers a languorous introduction to that ‘old marvellous land of tales’, and…
A charming L’heure espagnole from Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera’s latest online production is a horophile’s fantasy fulfilled. For one hour, Toledo is transported to Kensington Church Street where, amid the grandfather, cuckoo, mantel, hook-and-spike and lantern…
Dame Emma Kirkby and Friends: Abiding Love
Dame Emma Kirkby’s Live from London, Spring concert coincided with Mothering Sunday, and Kirkby and the ‘Friends’ whom she had invited to perform with her had curated an eclectic and…
Poulenc’s brilliantly observed La voix humaine given a stunning Wigmore performance
We’ve all been there: the heart-lurching response to the sound of the telephone, the bitter disappointment when a text message isn’t returned and the rapid descent into floor-pacing emotional disarray.…
Met Stars Live in Concert: Sonya Yoncheva in Germany
At the start of The Metropolitan Opera’s most recent Met Stars Live in Concert broadcast, our genial host, Christine Goerke, introduced us to the Baroque Library of the Schussenried Cloister…
Songs of Travel: James Platt and Lada Valešová
The second day of Oxford Lieder’s two-day festival, Winter into Spring, heralded the arrival of the season of rebirth and renewal. If the programme presented by bass James Platt and…