Place ‘A Renaissance Christmas’ alongside ‘Stile Antico’ and one might comfortingly anticipate familiar festive fare, immaculately performed. That final expectation was rewardingly fulfilled in this instalment of VOCES8’s Live from…
Category: Broadcasts
The 66th Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2021
For the second year running, the Kathleen Ferrier Awards were delayed until the autumn and the participants had only a panel of illustrious judges and a small private audience before…
A Christmas Cracker from VOCES8
Christmas crackers usually come stuffed with a flimsy paper crown, a tacky toy, a plastic puzzle and a bad joke. But, open a VOCES8 Christmas Cracker and you’ll find the…
Elizabeth Llewellyn and Simon Lepper open the 2021-22 Wigmore Hall season with Italian and English song
One year on from her Wigmore Hall debut, and following the release of her highly praised album of the songs of Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Heart & Hereafter, soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn returned…
Opera on Location bring Debussy’s The prodigal son home to Sheffield
Located in one of Sheffield’s oldest industrial districts, Kelham Island Museum stands on a man-made island, the result of 12th-century engineering when a goit, or mill race, was constructed diverting…
Light from Darkness: Live from London Summer 2021 closes in celebratory style
As gentle as you have lived,have you died,too holy for sorrow!Let no eye shed a tearfor the spirit’s heavenly homecoming. The words of Friedrich Haug, commemorating the death of the…
I Fagiolini: Au naturel
I Fagiolini like a ‘hook’, and they’re expert at devising one. On this occasion it was a painting, or, rather, a series of paintings – The Four Seasons by Pieter…
Handel’s Heroes and Heroines: Mary Bevan and Barnaby Smith, Live from London
The now-familiar Live from London format was slightly revised for this recital of sinfonias, arias and duets from Handel’s oratorios and operas, titled Handel: Heroes and Heroines. VOCES8 were represented…
A New Day: The King’s Singers, Live from London
The King’s Singers’ Live from London Summer programme was titled, optimistically, A New Day, reflecting the series’ theme of renewal and regeneration, and drawing together music ‘with a focus on…
‘All shall be well’: ORA Singers and Zeb Soanes reassure and inspire
The optimistic words of Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1417) might seem out of place in the modern world. Yet, Mother Julian, as the English anchorite and mystic came to be known,…