Dame Emma Kirkby and Friends: Abiding Love

Dame Emma Kirkby’s Live from London, Spring concert coincided with Mothering Sunday, and Kirkby and the ‘Friends’ whom she had invited to perform with her had curated an eclectic and…

Poulenc’s brilliantly observed La voix humaine given a stunning Wigmore performance

We’ve all been there: the heart-lurching response to the sound of the telephone, the bitter disappointment when a text message isn’t returned and the rapid descent into floor-pacing emotional disarray.…

Met Stars Live in Concert: Sonya Yoncheva in Germany

At the start of The Metropolitan Opera’s most recent Met Stars Live in Concert broadcast, our genial host, Christine Goerke, introduced us to the Baroque Library of the Schussenried Cloister…

Songs of Travel: James Platt and Lada Valešová

The second day of Oxford Lieder’s two-day festival, Winter into Spring, heralded the arrival of the season of rebirth and renewal.  If the programme presented by bass James Platt and…

Winterreise: Fleur Barron and Julius Drake

Tenor Ian Bostridge’s award-winning idiosyncratic guide to, and all-embracing musing upon, Schubert’s Winterreise is subtitled ‘Anatomy of an Obsession’.  The obsession is Schubert’s, the wanderer’s, Bostridge’s and our own.  And,…

To the New World: the Carducci Quartet and VOCES8

VOCES8’s Live from London, Spring series continues to offer diverse delights.  Recent performances by Apollo 5 and Stile Antico framed The Winter House – an interactive family concert created and…

Oxford Lieder: Winter into Spring – the changing seasons

The weather was fortuitous for Oxford Lieder’s live, online mini-festival, Winter into Spring.  Across the UK, the blossom buds and nudging crocuses were bathed in warm sunshine, the thick dawn…

Live@Lakeside: Manchester Collective with soprano Ruby Hughes

“This music builds so much adrenaline that you feel you have to let that out at the end!”  With a smile and a giggle, violinist Rakhi Singh, co-founder of the…

VOCES8 open their Live from London, Spring festival

Spring may be almost upon us, its rituals heralding re-awakenings and promising new beginnings.  But, this year, when we are all stuck in an eternal present, the cycles of the…

Anna Netrebko: Met Stars Live in Concert

The latest, and tenth, concert in the Met Stars Live series took us to the Spanish Riding School in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace complex.  The concert was once again genially hosted…