With an all-British programme bookended by Eastern influences, variously Buddhist and Sanskrit, this was one of those concerts that looked interesting on paper. The curiosity quota was high, but the…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
PROM 9: Alice Coote sings Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder
This was a riveting concert. Brahms (in his most enigmatic of symphonies), Schoenberg (in one of his lushest of scores) and Mahler in one of his most profound of song…
PROM 7: Orliński serves up a tasty late-night supper of little-known Italian delicacies
For the first late night Prom of the 2024 season, Jakub Józef Orliński gave this intimate recital of 17th century Italian vocal and operatic music, which would have been sung…
PROM 6: A striking Verdi Requiem of blazing force and compelling drama
With this performance, the first given at the Proms since 2021, and twenty-second since its first outing in 1956, Verdi’s Requiem is now the most frequently performed non-operatic work I…
A vivid concert performance of Handel’s Orlando brings out its magical elements
In the midst of appearances at Garsington Opera as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iestyn Davies took the title role in one of the sorts of Baroque opera that…
Yale Schola Cantorum bring fire and refinement to Bach’s Mass in B minor
The official website for Yale Schola Cantorum (part of Connecticut’s Ivy League research university) somewhat matter-of-factly describes the group as “a chamber choir that performs sacred music from the sixteenth…
Thrilling singing from Tenebrae in Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles
Forming a choral centrepiece at the Newbury Spring Festival, Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles was given an inspirational outing by the internationally acclaimed ensemble Tenebrae at Douai Abbey in Woolhampton,…
Rapturous reception of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta in Poole
“Who’d have thought it could happen in Poole” voiced one overawed audience member. He was not referring to the standing ovation, although that in itself was exceptional, but the outstanding…
Celebrating the Schoenberg Sesquicentennial at Carnegie Hall
Over the past generation, the polymathic conductor Leon Botstein has done much to promote large and obscure late-Romantic works. A recent sold-out performance of Arnold Schonberg’s Gurre-Lieder at Carnegie Hall…
Jurowski’s London Philharmonic Ring comes to a magnificent end with Götterdämmerung
Life can sometimes imitate art and in the case of this concert performance of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung that has certainly been so. Originally scheduled for 2021, at the end of Vladimir…