Gian Carlo Menotti’s holiday classic, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was the first recorded opera I ever heard. Each Christmas Eve, while decorating the tree, our family sang along with the (still unmatched) original cast version. We knew the recording by heart, right down to the nicks in the LP. Ever since, no matter what the setting or the quality of a performance, I cannot get through it without tearing up.
Detlev Glanert: Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch (UK premiere)
It is perhaps not surprising that the Hamburg-born composer Detlev Glanert should count Hans Werner Henze as one of the formative influences on his work – he did, after all, study with him between 1984 to 1988.
Saint Cecilia: The Sixteen at Kings Place
There were eighteen rather than sixteen singers. And, though the concert was entitled Saint Cecilia the repertoire paid homage more emphatically to Mary, Mother of Jesus, and to the spirit of Christmas.
Liszt Petrarca Sonnets complete – AndrË Schuen, Daniel Heide
An ambitious new series focusing on the songs of Franz Liszt, starting with all three versions of the Tre Sonetti del Petrarca, (Petrarca Sonnets), S.270a, S.270b and S.161 with AndrË Schuen and Daniel Heide for Avi-music.de.
Insights on Mahler Lieder, Wigmore Hall, AndrË Schuen
At the Wigmore Hall, AndrË Schuen and Daniel Heide in a recital of Schubert and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and R¸ckert-Lieder. Schuen has most definitely arrived, at least among the long-term cognoscenti at the Wigmore Hall who appreciate the intelligence and sensitivity that marks true Lieder interpretation.
Ermelinda by San Francisco’s Ars Minerva
It’s an opera by Vicentino composer Domenico Freschi that premiered in 1681 at the country home of the son of the doge of Venice. Villa Contarini is a couple of hours on horseback from Vicenza, and a few hours by gondola from Venice).
Wozzeck in Munich
It would be an extraordinary, even an unimaginable Wozzeck that failed to move, to chill one to the bone. This was certainly no such Wozzeck; Marie’s reading from the Bible, Wozzeck’s demise, the final scene with their son and the other children: all brought that particular Wozzeck combination of tears and horror.
Une soirÈe chez Berlioz – lyrical rarities, on Berlioz’s own guitar
Une soirÈe chez Berlioz – an evening with Berlioz, songs for voice, piano and guitar, with StÈphanie D’Oustrac, Thibaut Roussel (guitar), and Tanguy de Williencourt (piano).
Glanert: Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch – UK premiere
The culmination of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion: Detlev Glanert on Saturday 7 December will be the UK premiËre of the German composer’s Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch conducted by Semyon Bychkov.