Louise Alder and Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall

Louise Alder’s lunchtime recital at Wigmore Hall, with pianist Joseph Middleton, was almost operatic in its scope and emotional energy.  And, Alder showed her fearlessness by opening her programme with…

A Twitcher’s Delight: Roderick Williams and Andrew West at Milton Court

A serious birdwatcher would take exception to being called a twitcher.  Whereas the former is happy to wait patiently and passively for avian visitors to visit their locale, twitchers chase…

Barbican Centre at 40: shortcomings and memorable moments

London’s Barbican Centre is 40 years old. Its inaugural concert back then for the official opening of the Barbican Centre – given on the 3rd March – had been played…

Origin: This is CLS

In 1971, the year in which he made his professional debut as a conductor, the late Richard Hickox founded the Richard Hickox Orchestra and the Richard Hickox Chorus, and commissioned…

Voices Unwrapped: Roderick Williams and members of the Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place

“Love, meet me in the green glen,Beside the tall elm-tree,Where the sweetbriar smells so sweet agen.”  The poet-speaker’s call to his beloved to join him, at sunset, in the green…

La voix humaine: Barbara Hannigan and the LSO at the Barbican Hall

Barbara Hannigan’s quasi-miraculous and multifaceted feats in this concert with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall made me reflect on what it is and means to ‘conduct’ a…

Carolyn Sampson, Tim Mead and Arcangelo explore German-Italian crosscurrents at Wigmore Hall

This concert at Wigmore Hall by Arcangelo, under their director Jonathan Cohen, explored German-Italian cultural crosscurrents in the early 18th century.  So, we had a motet dating from the Italian…

Mark Padmore and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall

The five concerts forming Mark Padmore’s 2022-23 residency at Wigmore Hall will be his last ‘full recitals’ at the Hall, though not necessarily his last appearances.  The series focuses on…

James Gilchrist and the Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall

On a day that the retiring Bishop of Liverpool described the culture of politics ‘right across the west’ as ‘adversarial, scratchy, exhausted’ and ‘rancid and dangerous’, the words of Dame…

Sounds of the Solstice: Tenebrae at Wigmore Hall

‘God made Sun and Moon to distinguish the seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons.’  So preached John Donne…