I Fagiolini do not just do choral concerts. Indeed, director Robert Hollingworth claimed in the pre-concert chat, he finds choral concerts boring. Instead what he and his group provide are experiences that go beyond straight recitals, bringing together elements of poetry, theatricality and unlikely juxtaposition, making old music sound new and allowing new music space to breathe alongside established classics.At Christmas I reviewed their contribution to an earlier Voces8 online festival, in which they combined Charpentier, Howells and Dylan Thomas. Also around the same time they released a Read more ...

 Joseph Lauber: Symphonies 1 and 2 Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn/Kaspar Zehnder (Schweizer Fonogramm)Two CDs from boutique Swiss label Schweizer Fonogramm have recently caught my ear. One presents a pair of symphonies by the long-lived Joseph Lauber (1864-1952), remembered, if at all, as Frank Martin’s composition teacher. Lauber wrote six symphonies, the scores of nos. 1 and 2 rescued from a Lausanne university library by Kaspar Zehnder and recorded last summer in Berne. As long as you’re not expecting Mahler or Bruckner, you’ll be delighted. Both symphonies are exactly as you’d Read more ...

For their concert debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Gesualdo Six brought a programme of English motets for the final instalment in the venue's trio of Easter concerts. Having come together for a one-off project in 2014, singing Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday, this young, all-male ensemble found their vocal chemistry worked so well they carried on making music together. Though Gesualdo was absent from this performance, the works performed were all from around his time, opening with Orlando Gibbons’s "Come oh Holy Ghost".The group have a remarkable blend, Read more ...

Sir Mark Elder is back with the Hallé for the latest (and penultimate) filmed concert in their “Winter Season” of 2020 and 2021, including the world premiere of Huw Watkins' Second Symphony. He introduces it from the Bridgewater Hall foyer, and mentions plans for a six-concert summer series with audiences present in the hall – well, let’s hope so.There’s the usual “tuning up” brief clip of the busy streets of Manchester, and it’s straight into Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, with principal flute Amy Yule’s delightful solo, the harps of Marie Leenhardt and Eira Lynn Jones, and Read more ...

The Southbank Centre automatically stuck the trusty “Bohemian Rhapsodies” headline on this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert of Czech music streamed from the still-deserted Royal Festival Hall. Given Janáček’s presence on the bill, they should have made that “Moravian” as well. I know – get a life. Well, as we wait for that to begin properly once more, Marquee TV continue to bring high production values to their transmissions from the RFH.Sometimes, indeed, the team seems to takes undue, intrusive care. Directed by Nathan Prince, this gig featured too much moody blue and crimson lighting Read more ...

I can’t deny that it’s great to be able to experience a recital by Benjamin Grosvenor live from the Barbican despite lockdown, streamed into your own home. The filming of this performance on Saturday night was superb, clear and well paced; we could see his hands up close, from a good variety of angles, and they are well worth seeing; and the coloured lighting was coordinated nicely with the music, for instance sea-turquoise for Ravel’s “Ondine”. Nonetheless, a certain heartbreak remains upon seeing the pianist adrift on a small platform constructed in the middle of the empty stalls, like a Read more ...

 Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Piano Concerto No. 4, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra/Lahav Shani (piano and conductor) (Warner Classics)Poor Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year saw most of the projected live events cancelled, but good new recordings have continued to appear. One reason for liking this one, performances aside, is the content; pairing a mature piano concerto with a late symphony makes for a satisfying concert in a handy package. Lahav Shani’s Beethoven is powerfully positive, the shadows having more impact because they contrast so strongly with the prevailing mood. Directing Read more ...

The Polyphonic Concert Club is a collective of musicians – including Isata Kanneh-Mason and I Fagiolini – offering recorded chamber recitals released weekly through March and April. Like the festivals of Voces8 (I reviewed their Christmas series) they are aimed at a premium market: high-quality filmed content at a significant price, here £95 for the six concerts, not far off the cost of live tickets. Only the Club itself will know whether there has been enough take-up to make it financially viable, but on the evidence of yesterday’s recital by the Castalian Quartet, they have not compromised Read more ...

Well, it wasn’t quite Messiah, but it was a source of joy. In ENO’s end-of-lockdown staging, BBC Two’s transmission of Handel’s resurrection song delivered a scant 54 minutes of music from the Coliseum on Easter Saturday. In contrast, two ancient Poirot movies, staples of Bank Holiday line-ups roughly since the Pleistocene Era, had hogged fully four hours of the channel’s afternoon schedule. Miserly, timid, cheese-paring, grudging: the Proms partially excepted, BBC TV’s default attitude to classical music never fails to disappoint – even when the oratorio in question has been a beloved pillar Read more ...

Last Easter, viewing options were limited: no-one who saw it will forget a version of Bach’s St John Passion from the church where it was first performed in 1724, Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, with an idiosyncratic tenor taking all the parts other than the chorales – live from a quintet and streamed in from around the world – and accompanied only by organ/harpsichord and percussion. But the real thing has been so longed for. This year, if you booked far enough in advance, you could even catch small vocal groups in various church services; I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by the Maundy Thursday Read more ...

The baroque music ensemble Arcangelo have been around since 2010 but I hadn’t heard them before this pair of concerts streamed from Wigmore Hall in the last week. But what I heard has certainly encouraged me to seek out more – and they have quickly built up a large discography ready to be tucked into. This includes the Bach violin concertos with Alina Ibragimova, who joined them for a journey through Vivaldi, Bach and Corelli last Friday, while frequent collaborator Iestyn Davies duetted with Carolyn Sampson in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater on Tuesday.The Wigmore Hall has been a particular oasis Read more ...

A year into the pandemic, it is hard to imagine anybody relishing the prosect of Lenten austerity. But the liturgical calendar trundles on, and here we are in Holy Week. The aptly named Tenebrae Choir, under conductor Nigel Short here offer a traditional Lent programme, mostly solemn but with a few lighter numbers. At the heart were three Bach motets, contextualised by similar music from earlier and later centuries: Schütz, Reger and James MacMillan.The Wigmore Hall stage proved insufficient for the ten singers, given social distancing requirements, and an extension had to be added at the Read more ...