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.…

Das Rosenband: Inga Kalna presents Strauss alongside some Latvian gems

It’s probably fair to say that Latvian composers don’t feature greatly on even the most avid classical music aficionado’s radar.  When I reflect, only the names of Ēriks Ešenvalds and…

Date announced for International Opera Awards 2021

2020 winners to be revealed in virtual event on Monday May 10Exclusive performances from stars of the opera worldEvent will raise funds for Artist Hardship Fund#OperaAwards2021 The International Opera Awards…

English National Opera and BBC Two announce the broadcast of Handel’s Messiah, captured exclusively for television this Easter

English National Opera (ENO) and BBC Two today announce that a specially-created concert of Handel’s Messiah will be recorded for exclusive broadcast on BBC Two this Easter.  The hour-long performance of Handel’s…

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…

I wonder as I wander: an assured debut from James Newby and Joseph Middleton

Recorded only five years since his graduation from Trinity Laban, this is an excellent debut CD from the not-yet-thirty-year-old James Newby, already with a string of prizes including the prestigious Kathleen…

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…

Alastair White’s ROBE: a ‘fashion-opera’

If Rousseau, Marx, Einstein, Lacan and Bill Gates were to collaborate on an opera, what would they create?  Perhaps something not unlike ROBE by the Scottish composer and writer Alastair…