A programme entitled Covid’s Metamorphoses might not seem a very auspicious way to celebrate a 120th anniversary, but, curated by pianist Graham Johnson, this special Song Gala placed themes of…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
Handel in Rome: Ensemble Marsyas at Wigmore Hall
All roads lead to Rome. And, that’s where George Frideric Handel, not yet 22 years of age, arrived at the end of 1706. Eager to perfect his skills in composition…
Met Stars Live in Concert: Three Divas
From Four Wagnerians to Three Divas; from the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden to the 250-year-old theatre of Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles. And, for Christine Goerke, from the opera stage…
Music fit for an Emperor: Bampton Classical Opera at St John’s Smith Square
It’s a brave company that celebrates the return of live performance with an opera titled La corona, but ambitious, innovative and imaginative describe Bampton Classical Opera perfectly, and it was…
Wagnerians Live in Concert
So, after months of serving as the immensely professional, amiable and modest host of the Metropolitan Opera’s Met Stars Live in Concert series, soprano Christine Goerke finally got her own…
A magical marriage of Occident and Orient: Fleur Barron at Leeds Lieder
‘Dreams, Homeland and Childhood’ was an apt title for Fleur Barron’s Leeds Lieder Festival recital with pianist Joseph Middleton. Born in Northern Ireland, to a British father and Singaporean mother,…
Re-Wilding the Wasteland: I Fagiolini return to Live from London
I Fagiolini’s third contribution to VOCES8’s Live from London series took its inspiration and its structure from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, a poem described in the introductory programme note…
The House of Life: David Butt Philip and James Baillieu at Leighton House
The Rossetti family, according to William Michael, in Some Reminiscences (1906), ‘were not a musical family; they had no gift in that direction … no craving to be constantly hearing…
An absorbing, imaginative ‘enactment’ of the St John Passion from Oxford Bach Soloists
Last April, writing in the Observer, Fiona Maddocks lamented her first Easter without the mysteries and joys of Bach. ‘This year all performances have been cancelled. Our lives have already…
Bach’s B Minor Mass: VOCES8 and the AAM on Easter Sunday
In 1818, the Swiss musician, writer and publisher Hans Georg Nägeli (1773–1836) issued a public advertisement announcing an ambitious publishing project, which would make a new Mass, that he had…