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…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
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…
The Makropulos Case with Simon Rattle and the LSO
Simon Rattle’s twin traversal of the Janáček operas in concert in London and onstage in Berlin has now reached The Makropulos Case in the former, Claus Guth’s staging for the…
Barber’s Vanessa Comes to Boston
Samuel Barber’s first opera, Vanessa, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 – when serialist abstraction and stark realism dominated the world of modern opera. Many critics immediately dismissed it…
The Power to Inspire: Dame Sarah Connolly at Wigmore Hall
Composers have always been inspired to write for others: this is one of the rich seams of inventiveness running through so much music, old and new. Over many decades Dame…
A Mixed Messiah from AAM
… and so to my second and final Messiah this year. I mention this, despite the fact he first was reviewed for a different website: Wild Arts’ staged Messiah at…
Noël à la Chapelle: Magnificat
Christmas comes to Versailles, and the magnificent Chapelle Royale, courtesy of Le Poème Harmonique and Vincent Dumestre, one of the finest conductors of Baroque music around. There was even a…
A swallow returns: the elusive final version of Puccini’s La rondine
Although more associated with operas that really reside in the cracks of the repertoire, Opera Rara does investigate – or reconstruct – versions of better-known opera. Their release of the…