The greatest procession of mass movements ever composed merits the best line-up of soloists, both vocal and instrumental, as well as the perfect ensemble – small in size, big and rich in sound where needed – and inspired direction. That it was likely to get them seemed obvious from the advertised names, but last night, as always, Peter Whelan inspired everyone to go beyond what we might have imagined.He applies pressure points imperceptibly everywhere so that Bach opens out from period-style devotion to something more operatic, above all in the first choruses of the B minor Mass and Read more ...

High on the hill of fascinating New Ross in County Wexford sits its greatest treasure, the ruined 13th century Gothic beauty of St Mary’s. Unless you come at it from the east, its glories are concealed behind the working church which completes it and takes the place of the old nave, built in 1813 and “improved” twice later that century.Plain and spacious inside, with a few military memorials on the wall, the acoustics of its shoebox shape (think a smaller Musikvereinsaal without the trimmings) are perfect, as pianists great and less well-known have attested over the 19 years of the stunningly Read more ...

One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a drive to the absurdly picturesque church and castle at Crichton (fit setting for a Netflix epic, let alone a blood-soaked bel canto opera), venues and resources do set some limits to works that can be presented to the standards he demands.But not many: this year the festival hosted a double-bill of one-acters from Scottish Opera; it will welcome both the Philharmonia Orchestra at full strength, and Reinaldo Alessandrini’s legendary Concerto Italiano ensemble Read more ...

In the Saxony of 1725 – still in the grip of Europe’s “Little Ice Age” – Bach and his musicians would seldom have had to deal with the sort of midsummer sauna that enveloped Trafalgar Square last night. Yet, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Masaaki Suzuki, the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists managed to beat the heat with an exhilarating shirt-sleeved journey through the cantatas that Bach wrote exactly three centuries ago for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Suzuki and his crew always looked cool but, excitingly, didn’t sound it. Here was choral and instrumental Bach performed Read more ...

In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of Bach’s compressed gospel tragedy a “ritual”. You understand why that word claims its place. However, there’s not much consciously liturgical about the AAM’s musical approach.Authentic their instruments might be, and director Laurence Cummings’s scrutiny of the scores – this time he reverted to Bach’s 1749 iteration, which largely reprises the 1724 original – never lacks scholarly rigour. But the intense chamber drama unfolding in the middle of the big Read more ...

Víkingur Ólafsson had something to prove at the Wigmore Hall. And prove it he did, even if, this time, his Goldberg Variations left a few features of Bach’s inexhaustible keyboard panorama at the edge of his pianistic picture. The much-loved Icelandic chart-topper had promised Beethoven’s final three sonatas for this concert. His last-minute reversion to the familiar Goldbergs – which he played on 88 occasions around the world last season after a supremely successful DG recording – had disappointed a portion of his vast fan-base. Besides, the prodigious newcomer Yunchan Lim had just performed Read more ...

I was in Germany last week, and nearly every town I went to was advertising a St Matthew or a St John Passion taking place in the week up to Easter. It says something about how deeply engrained Bach’s Passion settings are in German culture that they can muster up so many performances while, in most years, we in Scotland get only one for the whole country.What a one it is, though. The Dunedin Consort are leaders in this repertoire and their acres of experience tell with every well-turned phrase, every carefully shaped cadence, and every dramatically pointed chord that gives life, meaning and Read more ...

When you’ve already come as close as possible to perfection in the greatest masterpiece, why risk a repeat performance with a difference? Because Bach’s St Matthew Passion needs to be an annual fixture without routine, and because inspirational IBO director Peter Whelan can be guaranteed not only to recapture the magic but to try a few new things, and to choose new soloists with fine judgement.Two replacements matched the impact of last year's Evangelist and alto 1. Having got over the astonishment at the perfect countertenor, Hugh Cutting, in 2024, it was always a given that the great Helen Read more ...

The musician Abel Selaocoe reaches out to the ancestors, African and European, continuing a journey that spans continents and centuries, an adventurer guided by love and respect for those who have departed, and yet nourish by the splendour of now.On his second album, Selaocoe plays many of his own compositions, some of them rooted in African tradition, others drawing from the baroque repertoire that he’s felt drawn to since he was a child. From the opening track, “Tshole Tshole”, an invitation to the spirit world and a composition based on a South African hymn, the album weaves in and out of Read more ...

Last night was the first time I had heard the 12 Ensemble, a string group currently Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall, and I was very impressed, both by the standard of the playing and the enterprising programming. This gave regular audience-members a little of what they’re used to (a chunk of Brahms) and a decent portion of what they’re not.The first half featured a sequence of pieces which in some way dealt with music of the past, starting with an arrangement of Bach by cellist Max Ruisi (one of the co-founders of 12 Ensemble). Komm, süsser Tod was played with poise and warmth by the Read more ...

 Snow Dance for the Dead: Choral Music by Seán Doherty New Dublin Voices/Bernie Sherlock (Voces8 Recordings)I have come across the choral music of Seán Doherty more and more recently and always liked what I have heard. His music is imaginative, wide-ranging and original, and all these things are evident in his debut disc with New Dublin Voices, under their enterprising conductor Bernie Sherlock. Doherty has been a member of the choir since 2015, and Sherlock describes him as “a tap that pours out great choral music”. There is certainly more than enough variety to sustain a full album – Read more ...

If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book of the Leipzig cantor’s choral and orchestral art. Its complex patchwork of manuscripts dating from different decades only came together for a full public performance in 1859: the year in which Wagner completed Tristan und Isolde. So, in the form we know it, this is decidedly modern music, always open to exploration and renewal. At St Martin-in-the-Fields, Kristian Bezuidenhout and the English Concert chose – in choral terms – an almost-minimal Read more ...