countertenors
James Bowman, Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore HallSaturday, 21 May 2011The Wigmore Hall was full to capacity last night, its crowd gathered to pay homage to a great musician at the end of his career, and to discover the talents of a great musician at the very beginning of his. While Alfred Deller might have been the... Read more... |
CD: Wild Beasts - SmotherThursday, 05 May 2011There's no doubt about it, Hayden Thorpe has the most manly falsetto in modern music. It's not the wheedling whine of the post-Radiohead generation of indie sadsacks, nor the haunted and haunting quaver of an Anthony Hegarty, nor yet the... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, The Bach Choir, Royal Festival HallSunday, 10 April 2011As Handel’s Messiah is to Christmas so the music of Bach is to Lent. Every Passiontide churches and concert halls are flooded with performances that include everything from dainty consort renderings of the St John Passion to choral societies... Read more... |
Orlando Furioso, Barbican HallSaturday, 26 March 2011Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso has yielded more than its fair share of operatic spin-offs. Inspiring three operas apiece from both Handel and Vivaldi, as well as works from Lully, Haydn, Caccini and Rameau, its vivid stories of love, magic and... Read more... |
Iestyn Davies, Richard Egarr Wigmore HallThursday, 13 January 2011Not a lot of swooning goes on at the Wigmore Hall. Nor does it seem the kind of institution to endorse rapturous wailing, beating of the breast, or the throwing of either flowers or underwear. All of which leaves one with the problem of how to... Read more... |
Cecilia Bartoli Sings Handel, Barbican HallWednesday, 08 December 2010Cecilia Bartoli invites you to her party, she stands on stage beaming and welcoming you as her guest, about to serve up a banquet of song. This is what last night’s concert felt like in the glowing warmth of this remarkable Italian mezzo-soprano’s... Read more... |
Scholl, Jaroussky, Ensemble Artaserse, BarbicanWednesday, 08 December 2010The egos and rivalries of the great castrati – of Senesino, Carestini, Farinelli – are legendary. Too few arias, too unheroic a role, or just too little virtuosity (Handel’s beautiful “Verdi prati” was almost lost to us when Senesino rejected its... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: René Jacobs InterviewSunday, 05 September 2010René Jacobs: singer, conductor, scholar, archivist, alchemist, teacher. In recent years he's been "rehabilitating" the Mozart operas for the Harmonia Mundi label, eradicating 19th-century retouchings and stylistic anomalies in order to restore these... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 7Saturday, 24 April 2010This month’s eclectic selection of new releases includes offbeat performances of Berlioz and Mahler, a neglected masterpiece by Swiss composer Frank Martin, Bach performed in two contrasting styles, Schubert piano music, a Roussel symphony and an... Read more... |
Handel Remixed, BarbicanSaturday, 19 September 2009Are you allowed to like both Andreas Scholl and David Daniels? I've always felt slightly guilty over this one - it feels somewhat indecent to listen ruthlessly to Scholl for some pieces, and drop him like a spurned lover for Daniels when the mood... Read more... |
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