‘Playing music is for a woman a vain and frivolous thing. And I would wish you to be the most serious and chaste woman alive. Beyond this, if you do not play well your playing will give you little pleasure and not a little embarrassment. … Therefore, set aside thoughts of this frivolity and work to be humble and good and wise and obedient. Don’t let yourself be carried away by these desires, indeed resist them with a strong will.’
Category: Performances
Burying the Dead: Ceruleo offer ‘Baroque at the Edge’
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my bedroom?”
‘Sound the trumpet’: countertenor duets at Wigmore Hall
This programme of seventeenth-century duets, odes and instrumental works was meticulously and finely delivered by countertenors Iestyn Davies and James Hall, with The King’s Consort, but despite the beauty of the singing and the sensitivity of the playing, somehow it didn’t quite prove as affecting as I had anticipated.
Brenda Rae’s superb debut at Wigmore Hall
My last visit of the year to Wigmore Hall also proved to be one of the best of 2018. American soprano Brenda Rae has been lauded for her superb performances in the lyric coloratura repertory, in the US and in Europe, and her interpretation of the title role in ENO’s 2016 production of Berg’s Lulu had the UK critics reaching for their superlatives.
POP BohËme: Melodic, Manic, Misbehaving Hipsters
Pacific Opera Project is in its fourth annual, sold out run of Puccini’s La bohËme: AKA ‘The Hipsters’, and it may seem at first blush that nothing succeeds like success.
Edward Gardner conducts Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ
L’Enfance du Christ is not an Advent work, but since most of this country’s musical institutions shut down over Christmas, Advent is probably the only chance we shall have to hear it – and even then, only on occasion. But then Messiah is a Lenten work, and yet …
Fantasia on Christmas Carols: Sonoro at Kings Place
The initial appeal of this festive programme by the chamber choir, Sonoro, was the array of unfamiliar names nestled alongside titles of familiar favourites from the carol repertoire.
Dickens in Deptford: Thea Musgrave’s A Christmas Carol
Both Venus and the hearth-fire were blazing at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance during this staging of Thea Musgrave’s 1979 opera, A Christmas Carol, an adaptation by the composer of Charles Dickens’ novel of greed, love and redemption.
There is no rose: Gesualdo Six at St John’s Smith Square
This concert of Christmas music at St John’s Smith Square confirmed that not only are the Gesualdo Six and their director Owain Park fine and thoughtful musicians, but that they can skilfully shape a musical narrative.
Temple Winter Festival: The Tallis Scholars
Hodie Christus natus est. Today, Christ is born! A miracle: and one which has inspired many a composer to produce their own musical ‘miracle’: choral exultation which seems, like Christ himself, to be a gift to mankind, straight from the divine.