The relationship between words and music is a long one — but not an exclusive one. Indeed, the idea of a chamber music festival with words and storytelling at its heart has ruffled a few feathers. After all, there is a wealth of repertoire for instrumentalists alone - isn’t this what Sheffield Chamber Music Festival is here to celebrate?For singers, however, discounting the odd “vocalise”, words and storytelling are at the heart of things. The drama of opera is an obvious place to find narrative, but inside every German Lied, English song or Mayan lament there is a character—whether Read more ...

The last time I heard the excellent Carice Singers was last year as they marked the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt. But Pärt’s meditative and inward musical language could not be further from the jagged and confrontational world of Steve Martland, the focus of last Thursday’s Kings Place recital. The seamless switch from one to the other shows the versatility of the choir, made of up some of the finest young choral singers in London, led by the presiding intelligence of conductor George Parris.Martland, who died at just 58 in 2013, was best known for the post-minimalist instrumental pieces he Read more ...

With Cardiff’s St David’s Hall continuing under wraps while it gets a new roof, the BBC NOW is still having to be tyre-levered into the much smaller Hoddinott Hall for its public concerts. It refuses to be restricted by this minor inconvenience. Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, in Thursday’s concert conducted by Alexandre Bloch (pictured above), was done with the usual army of strings and duly pinned us all metaphorically to the back wall with the sheer blast of sound in one of its composer’s noisiest tone poems.They even named the concert after the piece: "Death and Transfiguration", even Read more ...

Concertos where the soloist is a member of the orchestra are something of a Scottish Chamber Orchestra speciality. They’re always among their best-sold concerts each season, and there are obvious gains of warmth and communication when the band are playing to support one of their own. This week, the honour fell to Philip Higham, the SCO’s principal cello, and he played Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto with so much involvement and quasi-operatic intensity that it was easy to forget how low down the priority list Schumann’s concertos were until very recently.Higham clearly believes in the work Read more ...

 Louis Couperin: The Complete Works Jean Rondeau (harpsichord, organ and artistic direction) (Erato) Image Louis Couperin (1626-1661) was the first musically and historically significant member of the Couperin family, long overshadowed by his nephew François. Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, this handsome box set’s driving force, contributes a useful pocket biography in which he compares Louis to Mozart. Aside from the fact that both composers died aged 35, Rondeau considers Louis to have been “a genius who brought a new style to light”. Read more ...

The Hallé Orchestra is still in many ways the well honed, burnished instrument created by Sir Mark Elder over his near quarter-century as its music director, and his calm authority over it was apparent in almost every note of this, his second Bridgewater Hall appearance in the present season.Radio 3 listeners – the concert was broadcast live – will have been aware as much as those in the auditorium of the qualities of its playing under its now Conductor Emeritus: incisive articulation, intelligently balanced and unified ensemble, sweet and passionate string playing, rapier-thrust brass Read more ...

Serendipity smiled on a lunchtime event you'd have been happy to hear any time, anywhere in the world. Edward Gardner's typically engaging short introduction told us that Royal Academy of Music string students were facing exams in a fortnight, so the brief was to find a programme predominantly for wind and brass. Quite apart from the fact that here were two amazing young soloists, RAM postgraduates, up to the mark of each work, the concertos in question were both created in 1924, both had divided double-bass parts - now that really was a coincidence - and (this bit I'm adding) Gardner had Read more ...

In the delirious and exhilarating Sephardic dance that finished their concert devoted to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian music of Jerusalem, one of the Apollo’s Fire fiddlers seemed to be playing – so my companion spotted – some Led Zeppelin riffs. In which case, the Chicago- and Cleveland-based Baroque orchestra had achieved a sort of cross-genre full house, or music classifier’s utter nightmare. File under: ClassicalFolkWorldJazz... Rock.  The night before, however, the Bach Double Violin Concerto had skipped and flown through St Martin-in-the-Fields with bravura elegance as much Read more ...

There are few concert experiences as satisfying as hearing cornerstone works of the Romantic repertoire played with energy, commitment and panache, which is what Saturday’s BBC Philharmonic delivered in generous measure.Much of the reason for that must be due to Anja Bihlmaier, the Phil’s principal guest conductor, whose visits are, it seems, always characterized by articulation that’s crafted and intelligent, with widely expressed dynamics and contrast and constant imaginative touches. Add to that the solo violin playing of Bomsori Kim and you have something special.First, however, was the Read more ...

I have to confess, I hadn’t been sure what to expect when I heard about The Art of Fugue staged with acrobats. This latest collaborative experiment in the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes 2026 season – the multi-arts festival with orchestral music at its centre – sounded somewhat counterintuitive; one of the Western canon’s most cerebral works twinned with an extrovert celebration of the human body.Yet the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Circa have been collaborating since 2015, and Circa – under the guidance of South-African-born Yaron Lifschitz – is an acrobatic group unlike many others. Read more ...

Messiaen’s Turangalîla, his sprawling 10-movement, 75-minute extravaganza, is garish, graphic and glorious. It is a full-bore, Technicolor, over-the-top, spectacular blast of orchestral fireworks from beginning to end. It is, as the kids say, “a lot”. But not enough for the curators of Multitudes, a multi-disciplinary festival at the Southbank Centre this month, who paired the it with a specially-commissioned animated film by 1927 Studios. Bad idea.I’m not sure any film would enhance the experience of Turangalîla live – how can the music alone not be enough? – but this one positively ruined Read more ...

Sir Adrian Boult: Complete Stereo Recordings 1956-1978 (Warner Classics) Image This hefty box set contains 79 discs, the earliest taped when conductor Sir Adrian Boult was 67, the final one when he was 85. Some conductors’ late recordings are too idiosyncratic for general listening but these are mostly excellent.  Think Boult and it’s impossible not to think Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams, all composers which the conductor knew, but there’s a wealth of other repertoire here; Boult gave the first British performances of works as Read more ...