This was the third performance by VOCES8 that I’d attended or viewed in two weeks, which confirms that their virtuosity is matched by their versatility, and that they have a…
Longborough Festival Opera appoints inaugural Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow
Longborough Festival Opera has appointed Harry Sever as its first Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow. Sever will work alongside Longborough Music Director and eminent Wagnerian Anthony Negus for the next three seasons as the festival builds…
A Christmas Cracker from VOCES8
Christmas crackers usually come stuffed with a flimsy paper crown, a tacky toy, a plastic puzzle and a bad joke. But, open a VOCES8 Christmas Cracker and you’ll find the…
Virtuosic performances by Tenebrae at the Wigmore Hall
Tenebrae has clearly reached that point in its timeline when it could build a roster of virtually unknown pieces and still attract an audience, safe in the knowledge that its…
Magical music-making from Padmore and Biss at Milton Court
‘Glorious and emblazoned in their gentlest blood marriage, they stand there before us, the gentlest of all arts, the art of poetry and the art of music.’ Robert Schumann’s essay,…
The Tree: themed tribute disc from the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge
This celebrated choir occupies the lion’s share of an album shared with Yale Schola Cantorum and former members and friends of the college. It comprises live performances drawn from chapel…
Bampton Classical Opera 2021 Young Singers’ Competition – winner announced
Bampton Classical Opera is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2021 Young Singers’ Competition is Australian soprano Cassandra Wright. The second prize has been awarded to soprano Jessica Cale. The winner of the…
Scenes from the Wild: a stunning new orchestral song-cycle from Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist, the winner of the 2020 Wainwright Prize, chronicles the turning of the seasons from the spring equinox of 2018, when McAnulty was fourteen,…
An RAM double bill: Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi
How wonderful at last to return to opera at the Royal Academy of Music. (I caught an excellent concert of chamber music by Bartók and Eötvös from musicians coached by…
CCM names Voice Professor Stuart Skelton as J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair in Opera
An internationally acclaimed and award-winning heldentenor, Skelton will guide one of the nation’s preeminent opera training programs in his new role at CCM Grammy nominee and 2014 International Opera Awards…