‘This concert takes us on a journey through everything in Mahler’s world,’ was presenter Dr Leah Broad’s ambitious claim for this London Chamber Orchestra programme at St John’s Smith Square. …
Category: Recitals/Concerts
Atmospheric performances from Vox Luminis at St John’s Smith Square
The week-long St John’s Smith Square Easter Festival concluded with a rare appearance by the Belgian early music ensemble Vox Luminis, offering choral gems from two masters of the German…
The Academy of Ancient Music bring Bach’s St John Passion, of 1725, to the Barbican
There are four versions of Bach’s St John Passion. The first was heard on Good Friday 1724, in the St Nicholas Church in Leipzig, during Bach’s first year of employment…
London Handel Festival at St John’s Smith Square
On Wednesday 14 April 2022, two London festivals came together when the London Handel Festival brought a programme of Baroque sacred music to St John’s Smith Square’s Easter Festival. Adrian…
Technically accomplished Marian Consort at Turner Sims
In a concert that could have been titled ‘Towards Bach’, the Marian Consort fashioned a themed programme that linked two towering German composers: Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. They…
London Handel Festival: Opera Settecento perform Fernando, re di Castiglia
This London Handel Festival performance at St George’s Hanover Square was billed as ‘Fernando, re di Castiglia: A Handel Premiere’. Well, not quite, one might say: the first staged revival…
A truthful Winterreise from Ian Bostridge and Angela Hewitt at Wigmore Hall
Wunderlicher AlterSoll ich mit dir gehn?Willst zu meinen LiedernDeine Leier drehn? [Strange old man!Shall I go with you?Will you grind your hurdy-gurdyto my songs?] If the answer to the wanderer’s…
Stream of Tears (Iberian roots): The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall
Marian devotion in the New World was the focus of this concert by The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall. Perhaps it was coincidental that it happened to be Mother’s Day in…
St John Passion: devotion and drama from Mark Padmore and the OAE
J.S. Bach’s two settings of the Passion of Christ are soaring manifestations of early modern Lutheran devotion, profound meditations on suffering (from the Latin verb, patior, meaning ‘to suffer, bear…