Baroque
Rubens: An Extra Large Story, BBC TwoSaturday, 03 January 2015
The ebullient presenter, writer and director Waldemar Januszczak opens his enthusiastic and proselytising hour-long film on Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) by reading out a series of disparaging quotes from other artists. William Blake thought... Read more... |
Daphnis et Églé/La Naissance d'Osiris, Les Arts Florissants, Christie, BarbicanWednesday, 19 November 2014
Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is,... Read more... |
Dancing Cheek to Cheek, BBC FourTuesday, 18 November 2014
I am picturing a scene in BBC4’s highly fortified underground headquarters, a conversation between its mastermind-in-chief and a hapless minion. “What do we do well, Stanley?” “History documentaries, boss.” “And what do people, according to... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Prokofiev, ShostakovichSaturday, 25 October 2014
Bach: Partitas 1-6 Igor Levit (piano) (Sony)Martin Geck's sleeve essay accompanying this pair of discs is a good read, hinting at the subtleties and complexities lying just below the surface of what may, superficially, look like six simple... Read more... |
10 Questions for Soprano Sandrine PiauMonday, 29 September 2014
French soprano Sandrine Piau, born in 1965 in a south-western suburb of Paris, has an agile, supple voice. It soars, so critics reach readily for all those bird metaphors: nightingale, sparrow, "she leaves the earth on wings of song" and so on. She... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bamberg: Top Town, Top OrchestraSunday, 28 September 2014
As a town of 70,000 or so people, Bamberg boxes dazzlingly above its weight in at least two spheres. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, risen to giddy heights under its chief conductor of the last 14 years Jonathan Nott, is decisively among Germany’s... Read more... |
Alright on the Night: at Glyndebourne with the OAESaturday, 09 August 2014
If you only ever listened to opera from recordings, you might overlook the fact that it's as much theatre as it is music. In the opera house on the night, it's all well and good for the orchestra to play the score and the singers to sing their parts... Read more... |
Joshua, Göttingen FO, Cummings, St John's Smith SquareMonday, 26 May 2014
This was smart programming. The final night of London's Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music presented the forces of the Göttingen Ha(e)ndel Festival. Both festivals - the London one ended last night, the Göttingen one starts next week - have taken... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bordeaux: Bottoms up for RameauSunday, 02 March 2014
Jean-Philippe Rameau, the most radical and inventive of French composers before Berlioz, died in Paris 250 years ago this September. 16 years later a gem among theatres opened its doors for the first time with a long evening’s entertainment... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Barocking Handel in the Opera HouseSunday, 09 February 2014
Oslo is a winter wonderland, and adults seem to be outnumbered by children, flocking from all over Norway to Disney on Ice. It’s the deep snow and the silence in pockets of the city rather than the kids which make me wonder if anyone has set Handel’... Read more... |
Theodora, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican HallSunday, 09 February 2014
The Barbican’s ongoing season of baroque operas and oratorios has been a mixed bag. Most recently The Sixteen’s Jephtha was a rather lacklustre affair, leaving me nervous of committing to the many hours of Handel’s beautiful (but protracted)... Read more... |
Acis and Galatea, Mid Wales Opera, CardiffFriday, 31 January 2014
Handel’s “little opera”, as he called Acis and Galatea when he was composing it in 1718, probably survived while his true, full-length operas vanished from sight precisely because it was little, compact and manageable, like Purcell’s Dido or... Read more... |
