This recital, part of an inventive series overseen by pianist Malcolm
Martineau, did exactly what it said on the tin: it journeyed the length of
Brahms’ creative life as a composer of songs, from his earliest adolescent
essays, through the early years of expansion and experiment, to the period of
maturity and confidence as the composer established himself in Vienna,
concluding with the moving, nuanced testaments of Brahms’ final years.
Category: Performances
Songlives: Johannes Brahms
Eugene Onegin in Montpellier
Entering the hall there arose the Dantesque “abandon all hope ye who enter” feeling — a cluttered a vista socialist setting, a poster of Lenin and large letters proclaiming Moscow, December 1999.
The Sixteen: Jephtha
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen brought Handel’s final oratorio, Jephtha, to the Barbican (14 January 2014) preparatory to recording the work.
Cosi fan tutte in Montpellier
This Cosi fan tutte completes the Montpellier Mozart/da Ponte trilogy staged by French metteur en scËne and esthËte Jean-Paul Scarpitta. Primarily studies in elegance and refinement these mises en scËnes have provoked all that that is most precious and perfect in Mozart’s scores.
Matthias Goerne — Mahler and Shostakovich, Wigmore Hall
At the Wigmore Hall, London, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes performed Mahler in a unique programme built around Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, op 145 (1974).
Otello in Genoa
Forget Shakespeare, this was distinctly an Otello without the ‘h’. It was Italian melodramma to its core, the collaboration of its metteur en scËne Davide Livermore, wunderkind conductor Andrea Battistoni and its Desdemona, Maria Agresto.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Lyon
Maybe there can be no bigger feat than making it through Les Contes d’Hoffmann in the Laurent Pelly version without a hitch or two.
Don Pasquale, Manitoba Opera
Manitoba Opera opened its 41st season with a rootin’ tootin’ new production of Don Pasquale from November 23 through 29, last staged by the Prairie company in 1997.
Les Arts Florissants: Airs sÈrieux et ‡ boire
In this unusual programme of late-seventeenth-century airs de cour,
Les Arts Florissants presented a flowing sequence of songs for solo and
ensemble voices with chamber accompaniment, the intimacy of the Wigmore Hall
neatly mimicking the privacy of the royal chambers of Louis XIV in which the
courtly compositions were originally performed.
Carmen, Royal Opera
Francesco Zambello’s 2006 Carmen, here revived for the sixth time, seems to have something of an identity crisis: sumptuous spectacle or gritty drama?