Britten
Classical CDs: Christmas 2024Saturday, 07 December 2024
Trio Mediæval: Yule (2L)Pick of my Christmas discs is this sublime collection from Trio Mediæval on the Norwegian audiophile label 2L, reflecting yuletide’s origins in Northern European pagan culture. Imaginative and idiomatic-sounding... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Vitamins, kings and magic spellsSaturday, 23 November 2024
Brahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)Who’d have thought that Igor Levit and Christian Thielemann would be such effective partners? Levitt is one of the most... Read more... |
Albert Herring, Scottish Opera review - fun, frivolity, and fine music-makingFriday, 25 October 2024
Having premiered at the Lammermuir Festival earlier this year, Daisy Evans’s new production of Britten’s Albert Herring is a gently funny and sweetly nostalgic telling of what’s essentially a coming of age comedy. In fact, the 80s costumes and the... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preservedSaturday, 12 October 2024
At first, you wonder if the peculiar voice of Henry James’s maybe unreliable narrator can be preserved in this production. Surely the outcome is known if we first meet the Governess in an insane asylum bed? Yet whether she was mad or maddened during... Read more... |
Prom 68, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review - eerie beauty sometimes faintly glitteringWednesday, 11 September 2024
Some operas shine in the vasts of the Albert Hall, others seem to creep back into their beautiful shells. Glyndebourne’s Carmen blazed, though Bizet never intended his opera for a big theatre, while Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, despite an... Read more... |
Prom 37, War Requiem, Clayton, Liverman, Romaniw, LSO, Pappano review - terror and tendernessMonday, 19 August 2024
This year’s Proms programme initially gave rise to some now-customary sneers about predictability, banality and dumbing down. Well, it all depends on where you sit, and what you hear. And my seats have witnessed one absolute humdinger after another... Read more... |
Prom 10, Van der Heijden, BBCSSO, Ryan Wigglesworth review - an engaging and esoteric delightSaturday, 27 July 2024
What is Englishness? Over the last century the answer has changed substantially. Yet last night’s Prom, which – according to the programme – set itself the task of celebrating “all things English” had a very particular answer.This was an England of... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival - romantic journeys, cosmic hallucinations and wild stompsWednesday, 12 June 2024
It may be unusual to begin festival coverage with praise of the overseer rather than the artists. Yet Roger Wright, who quietly leaves his post at Britten Pears Arts this July after a momentous decade, is no ordinary Chief Executive. I’ve never... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Cowhorns, gloves and marching drumsSaturday, 25 May 2024
Britten: Spring Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem, Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (LSO Live)Here’s as good a Britten sampler as you’ll find, opening with a truly terrifying account of the early... Read more... |
Goldscheider, Spence, Britten Sinfonia, Milton Court review - heroic evening songs and a jolly horn rambleWednesday, 10 April 2024
Milton Court, like its parent Barbican Hall, disconcertingly inflates the sound of larger ensembles and voices. Had there been a conductor for all four pieces in the Britten Sinfonia’s programme - Michael Papadopoulos was there for the two most... Read more... |
Elmore String Quartet, Kings Place review - impressive playing from an emerging groupTuesday, 09 April 2024
The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme that put music written by composers at a similarly early stage in their careers alongside another’s... Read more... |
Death In Venice, Welsh National Opera review - breathtaking BrittenSaturday, 23 March 2024
Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice (1973), adapted from Thomas Mann’s novella of the same name (1912) and the subject of one of Visconti’s later, most celebrated films, explores homoerotic attraction, the nature of beauty and the... Read more... |
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