wed 25/12/2024

Mozart

First Person: Alec Frank-Gemmill on reasons for another recording of the Mozart horn concertos

One former teacher of mine said of their recording of the Mozart horn concertos “I’m not really sure why I bothered”. Said recording is excellent, so they were probably just being excessively modest. Nevertheless, every new version of these pieces...

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First Person: Bob Riley on Manchester Camerata's championship of a Centre of Excellence for Music and Dementia

In May, it was announced that Greater Manchester was to become the UK’s first Centre of Excellence for Music and Dementia, hosted by Manchester Camerata.The Centre is an incredible opportunity and the result of the vision and energy of many people,...

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Le nozze di Figaro, The Mozartists, Page, Cadogan Hall review - cogency, intelligence and reverence

Ten years ago, Ian Page launched his and the Mozartists’ (then Classical Opera’s) remarkable endeavour to play music by WA Mozart 250 years after it was written, starting with a programme of material from 1765 by eight-year-old Mozart, and his...

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The Marrriage of Figaro, Opera Project, Tobacco Factory, Bristol review - small is beautiful indeed

The Marriage of Figaro is undoubtedly one of the greatest operas ever written. Mozart’s masterpiece is a display of musical perfection that never ceases to touch the heart and stimulate the musical mind.This gripping and enormously entertaining tale...

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The Magic Flute, Opera North review - a fresh vision of Mozart’s masterpiece

In an autumn season of three revivals, Opera North begin by inviting James Brining, artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, to oversee his own production from five years ago of Mozart and Emanual Schikaneder’s extraordinary musical play. It’s the...

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Bavouzet, Nemecz, McLachlan, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - finish line of a remarkable marathon

“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.But with...

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Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - great singing wasted

I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill...

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Prom 36, McGill, BBCSSO, New review - summery Shakespearean mummery

My three Proms so far this year have all featured regional BBC orchestras conducted by women, all excellent, and it surely reflects well on the Proms management that they have done so much to address this gender imbalance in recent years. In last...

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Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera review - fine-tuned telling it as it is

“Tradition is sloppiness,” Mahler the opera conductor is credited with saying. But in the case of old master John Cox’s long-serving Garsington production of the greatest of operatic comedes, not if it’s refreshed with the subtlest insights in to...

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Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne review - cornucopia of visual inventiveness eclipses everything else

Five years after it first clattered onto the Glyndebourne stage, André Barbe and Renaud Doucet’s visually exuberant Die Zauberflöte – featuring everything from dancing carcasses to a monster made out of blue-and-white crockery – continues to dazzle...

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Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - fun with abandon

There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy that is hard to resist.So it wasn’t exactly the programme originally advertised, and the concept of performing and...

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Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - enchantment in Mozart and Strauss

Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital. In her native France, and in the rest of Europe, she has gathered ecstatic reviews for her performance...

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