A venue that demands nothing less than the best singing, and with its own top-tier choir to prove it, this past weekend Washington National Cathedral played host to a smaller…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
Phoenix Lands: The LPO and Gardner in Kaprálová, Szymanowski and Bartók
The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s brief Phoenix Lands series of concerts looks at music from the period after the First World War when empires had crumbled and independent nations were being…
Pomegranates and Passion: Stravinsky’s Perséphone
For lovers of one particular television quiz, here’s your starter for ten. Who commissioned the following works: Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien, Ravel’s Bolero and Stravinsky’s Perséphone? The same person…
The UK Premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Climate-Motivated unEarth Attempts to Pack a Significant Message, but Musically Feels Limp
We’ve been there before with protest music or music aiming to generate change. And music can prompt desired responses – environmental, social or political – including works like Haydn’s ‘Farewell’…
Christophe Rousset completes his Lully opera cycle in refined form with Cadmus et Hermione
Reaching the end of his remarkable cycle of Lully operas (in recordings, with performances also usually presented alongside them) Christophe Rousset comes almost to the beginning of that body of…
Bel Cantanti Opera Offers Beautiful Russian Concert Ahead of Gala Performance Next Month
It’s not often that one gets to hear Russian music in the DMV, but Bel Cantanti’s latest concert at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda proves just how affecting this…
The Breadth and Depth that Schubert Finds for the Voice: Christian Gerhaher at Wigmore Hall
Imagine: twenty-seven short pieces by the same composer, curated for an entire evening’s entertainment. What are we thinking here? Sonatas by Scarlatti, waltzes by Chopin? Grieg’s Lyric Pieces or Bartók’s…
A Staged German Requiem in Paris: Insula’s unforgettable Brahms
Stagings of Bach Passions are, if not the norm, certainly not unknown; and Insula showed how effective known music with projection can be in Matt Collishaw’s Sky Burial, a film…
Fire, Paprika and Pepper: Spices Galore with Rattle, Kopatchinskaya and the LSO
Songs my mother taught me: the title of the fourth in a cycle of gypsy songs by Dvořák, but this title also stands as a convenient coat hanger for so…
Cycle de berceuses: Sabine Devieilhe and Mathieu Pordoy at Wigmore Hall
This was recital programming of the very highest level, the first half a cycle of lullabies; the second a celebration of the female creatrix in Her various forms. It all…