sopranos
Paris Chapters, Barbier Serrano, Finegan, Ling, Bloomsbury Festival review - beguiling journey around Irishmen abroadTuesday, 24 October 2023
Young French soprano Clara Barbier Serrano has everything it takes to shine in an overcrowded singers’ world, including vivacious communicative skills – I witnessed those for the first time last Tuesday, when she performed at the Oxford... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesseMonday, 23 October 2023
Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early... Read more... |
La Traviata, Welsh National Opera review - memorable revival, unforgettable leadSaturday, 23 September 2023
It’s always tempting, at curtain-up in La Traviata, to settle back, half-close one’s eyes, and soak up the familiar without the anxiety of the new. Not this time you won’t. David McVicar’s lavish 2009 text-true staging is being revived with a... Read more... |
Davidsen, Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä, Barbican review - full workout for the nervous systemMonday, 06 June 2022
It could have been the most electrifying week of the musical year. Alas, Heathrow meltdown kept me from two of Klaus Mäkelä’s Sibelius concerts with his Oslo Philharmonic in Hamburg. But there was still what should have been the grand finale, the... Read more... |
Sandrine Piau, David Kadouch, Wigmore Hall review - the joy is in the detailTuesday, 18 January 2022
“It mustn’t be a surface thing. You have to put in the work,” Janet Baker once said. Sandrine Piau’s Wigmore recital of German song followed by French song was the perfect demonstration of that credo in action.Whereas Piau described the repertoire,... Read more... |
Album: Vangelis - Juno to JupiterFriday, 01 October 2021
Along with Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis is a key figure in the development of - to be loosely colloquial about it – trance and chill-out electronica. His 1970s work was proggy trip music, laced with classical aspirations that... Read more... |
Shakespeare Re-Shaped, Opera Up Close online review - Verdi on the sofaWednesday, 24 March 2021
The screen lights up, the Zoom link connects and there, blinking back at you (30% awkward, 70% enthusiastic) is a familiar face. Is it definitely working? Can you hear me? What do we say now? God, I'm getting old. Even after 12 months of... Read more... |
Hughes, Manchester Collective, Lakeside Arts online review - creating the occasionMonday, 22 February 2021
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most... Read more... |
Fatma Said, Joseph Middleton, Wigmore Hall review - song recital heavenTuesday, 08 December 2020
This was the first song recital back at the Wigmore Hall following the second lockdown with a (distanced, 25%) audience. And it was a joy to be back. Great singing. That superb acoustic. A completely rapt audience. And, miraculously, not a single... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Enescu, Mendelssohn, Tuur, Sara StoweSaturday, 27 June 2020
Mendelssohn: Octet, Enescu: Octet Gringolts Quartet & Meta4 (BIS)Mendelssohn began work on his delicious Octet at the age of 16. He’d been composing for several years previously, though this work, along with the equally miraculous overture... Read more... |
La voix humaine, Grange Park Opera online review – hanging on the telephoneFriday, 05 June 2020
Rustles of renewal are stirring in the Surrey woods where Grange Park Opera has built the splendid theatre that remains, for this summer, sadly out of bounds. Faced with the cancellation of its 2020 programme, Wasfi Kani’s company has not simply... Read more... |
Davidsen, Oslo Philharmonic online review - perfect programming, supreme musicality from allMonday, 11 May 2020
Could there be more tender, tactful or soul-nourishing signs of a new musical normal than these two 45-minute gems? We're nowhere near emulating the kind of live distance concerts members of the Bergen, Oslo and Czech Philharmonics have been... Read more... |
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