| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 1-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Ideas, ideals, and influences: A Child of Our Time at The Rest is Noise with the LPO and Wigglesworth |
Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival has a number of strands of thought permeating its concerts. It explores the effects of war, sex and sexuality, politics, and race on some of the 20th century’s most important musical output. The underlying argument behind putting on this extraordinary series of events is that the music, much of which we know and love, cannot be understood properly without understanding the context in which it was written.
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| 2-Feb-2013 The London Coliseum | Disentangling La Traviata with Konwitschny at ENO |
Of the many and varied operatic openings, that of La Traviata is one that I find increasingly demanding on an emotional level. The mournful harmonies and diaphanous scoring for strings that start off the prelude notoriously portray ill-fated Violetta moments before she dies of TB, returning in the final act as her destiny is about to be fulfilled.Read full review... | |
| 19-Oct-2012 St Martin-in-the-Fields | A magical classic: Bach's B minor Mass at St Martin-in-the-Fields |
The “Bach B minor” is a classic amongst choral singers, but although parts of it are so familiar and the name is often tossed around casually, upon hearing it you are reminded why it has the status it does. Bach never heard the mass in its entirety and the movements were written years apart, explaining why there is such a huge range of style; this means we are spoilt as an audience. Although Bach probably intended the parts of the work to be performed separately as needed, the amalgamation is simply divine and results in an hour and 45 minutes of exquisite music.
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| 17-Oct-2012 The London Coliseum | Rufus Norris' Don Giovanni returns to ENO |
Three years ago, John Berry, ENO’s Artistic Director, invited acclaimed theatre director Rufus Norris to reinvent Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Unfortunately, it was not much of a success, and was panned by critics. This year, the production has returned to ENO, with some changes, albeit none that are particularly remarkable.
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