| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 30-Apr-2013 Leeds Grand Theatre | Opera North's Joshua at Leeds Grand Theatre |
 In spite of the fact that a Handel oratorio, however renowned, provides limited opportunities for staging, this production of Joshua, directed by Charles Edwards, is a largely successful exercise in the art of the possible. The magnificent Opera North Chorus is able to flaunt itself extensively, a stripped set with backstage views is used to good effect, a terrific orchestra is tightly conducted by Stephen Layton and there are no weak links amongst the soloists.
Read full review... | |
| 14-Feb-2013 Leeds Grand Theatre | A brilliant pairing by Opera North: La Voix Humaine and Dido and Aeneas in Leeds |
 The evening begins with La Voix Humaine: “Elle” is staring at us fixedly for what seems like a minute, smoke from the cigarette in her fingers providing the only movement. She sits in an oblong frame surrounded by light bulbs, indicating a substantial mirror of the sort you might find backstage. The orchestra begins, and the music is edgy. She snatches the black receiver to her ear when a call comes through, but lines get crossed, very frustratingly, and an operator has to assist.Read full review... | |
| 2-Feb-2013 Leeds Town Hall | A bracing experience: The Bergen Philharmonic at Leeds Town Hall |
 The young Christian Ihle Hadland should have performed on this stage at Leeds Town Hall before, as a finalist in the Leeds International Piano Competition. Why not? Similar fond musings must have wafted into the minds of other audience members as they watched and listened to him playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in C minor with one of the world’s oldest-established orchestras (250 years) as the centrepiece of this concert: his slightly tousled appearance belies his excellent control, delicacy and poetic sensibility.Read full review... | |
| 19-Dec-2012 University of Leeds Great Hall | The Orchestra of Opera North sounds fresh and new in Leeds University's Great Hall |
 Leeds is so lucky to have virtuoso violinist David Greed still within reach, ready and available to perform as a soloist at concerts like this with the excellent orchestra of which he was the youngest leader in the country when it was formed in 1978. It was really thrilling to experience The Lark Ascending live, and to see him standing there just a few feet in front of the audience.Read full review... | |
| 19-Oct-2012 Leeds Grand Theatre | Opera North's Faust at Leeds Grand Theatre |
 The set for this Faust is a series of blank screens, which slide about quickly and frequently, tall canvases for constantly changing images provided by Berlin-based video artist Lillevan. This, along with large white cubes which become boxes for Marguerite’s jewels and for the extracted hearts collected by Méphistophélès, make it seem as if the whole thing is part of an elaborate installation, spellbinding in itself. It would not be out of place in Tate Modern.Read full review... | |
| 14-Oct-2012 University of Leeds: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall | Leeds Lieder+ From Europe to America – A Day of Song |
 The sharp linguistic and enunciative abilities of Romanian mezzo Adriana Festeu are as impressive as her singing. Accompanied by Nico de Villiers, she launched “Leeds Lieder+ From Europe to America – A Day of Song” in the morning at Leeds University’s Clothworkers Hall with “Songs My Mother Taught Me”. She dealt very convincingly with Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs in Czech, followed by 5 Lieder, Op. 38 by Korngold in English, and George Enescu’s Sept Chansons de Clément Marot in French.
Read full review... | |
| 28-Sep-2012 Leeds Grand Theatre | Don Giovanni successfully launches Opera North's new season |
 Director Alessandro Talevi’s imagination, wit and audacity meant that Don Giovanni, which has just launched Opera North’s new season, was a huge success. The production was enthralling throughout, never dragging or disappointing, even in the second act. It works much better than others I have seen, because the emphasis is placed firmly on the comic rather than the pathetic. The balance is just right.
Read full review... | |
| 16-Jun-2012 Royal Northern College of Music | Opera Seria's debut production of Anna Bolena: A tremendous achievement |
 Lust, betrayal, beheadings. The words appeared prominently in the publicity for Opera Seria’s debut production of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, bringing Horrible Histories fleetingly to mind, but they do sum up the plot of one of the composer’s greatest works rather well. Henry VIII is intent on freeing himself from Anne Boleyn, his second wife, and has Jane Seymour, her lady-in-waiting, lined up to be his third. His plan is to find ‘evidence’ that Anne is adulterous by inviting her first love, Lord Richard Percy, back to England from exile.Read full review... | |
| 29-Apr-2012 University of Leeds: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall | Outstanding new songs from Leeds Lieder+ |
 The first piece at this afternoon concert, in the beautifully restored Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in the School of Music at Leeds University, dated from 2004: the song-cycle In Praise of Dreams, four poems by the Nobel prize-winning Wisława Szymborska translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, composed by Birmingham-based Joe Cutler. Soprano Sarah Leonard, who was responsible for the original commission, sang with Stephen Gutman on piano. Both are leading exponents of contemporary music. It was a refreshing, in places startling, beginning.
Read full review... | |
| 14-Apr-2012 Town Hall | Rigoletto at Skipton Town Hall shows Heritage Opera at its best |
| Some panache is required to put a credible orgy on the stage of venerable old Skipton Town Hall. Heritage Opera, which has plenty, does just that with a minimal number of participants: the opening scene has an engagingly rumbustious quality, with plenty of screams, snogging and groping but not much of the courtly elegance which might signify that this is more than your run-of-the-mill bordello. Read full review... | |
| 17-Feb-2012 Bridgewater Hall | BBC Philharmonic: Reflections on Debussy at the Bridgewater Hall |
 The evening of dreams began an hour before the concert, with Entre-Temps for oboe and string quartet by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, an admirer of Debussy and a similarly ‘cinematic’ composer, with an ability to play with sound-colours which is alluring for film directors in search of atmospheres. Takemitsu wrote that this short piece was made up of episodes in a dream which ‘moved on through the night towards the twilight’, but I heard – and saw – an anxious group discussion and shades of red: original dreams are transformed in the transmission.Read full review... | |
| 8-Dec-2011 Howard Assembly Room | DARE Composers' Forum in Leeds |
 New composers usually find it difficult, or rather near-impossible, to have their work performed in professional circumstances in front of a critical audience. DARE, a pioneering and visionary collaboration between the University of Leeds and Opera North, and the first partnership of its kind in Britain, goes quite some distance towards improving the situation, stating that it intends to “inspire and stimulate new ways of thinking and working.”
Read full review... | |
| 19-Nov-2011 Leeds Town Hall | Warsaw Philharmonic at Leeds Town Hall |
 This concert by Poland’s national orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, attracted a near-capacity audience which had in it a fair sprinkling of members of the local Polish community, judging from overheard conversations and some shouts of “Jeszcze raz!” (“More!”) at the end. Mindful of the popular vote, the orchestra delivered a romantic programme which included both Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, with Moniuszko and Górecki as side-offerings.
Read full review... | |
| 9-Oct-2011 Leeds College of Music: The Venue | Made in Yorkshire at Leeds Lieder+ |
| Festival Director Jane Anthony made a brief appearance before this concert, reminding the audience that it was dedicated to the memory of Lord Harewood, who died earlier this year. He had been a staunch supporter of Leeds Lieder+, with a great gift for spotting and developing young singers. The young performers on this occasion can count themselves as spotted and reasonably well-developed, and all of them qualify for Yorkshire passports. Read full review... | |
| 8-Oct-2011 Leeds College of Music: The Venue | Great German Romantics at Leeds Lieder+ |
 Florian Boesch reminded me of the terror I felt as a nine year-old boy treble: I had to walk home in the dark after rehearsing Schubert's version of The Erlking, with phantoms following.Read full review... | |
| 8-Oct-2011 Leeds College of Music: The Venue | Composers+ Poets Showcase at Leeds Lieder+ |
| This coming together of poets and musicians after months of preparation, many of them newly-fledged, all of them endowed with exceptional talent, was a central event of this festival, divided into nine sections. It was an opportunity to hear the future, which is sunny. Ian Duhig, the first poet, is not a fledgling, more a wise old owl who lives in an oak, famed not only for his erudition but for poems like goths, which is about the black-clad young people who gather outside Leeds Corn Exchange on Saturdays. Read full review... | |
| 8-Oct-2011 Leeds College of Music: The Venue | Messiaen's Harawi at Leeds Lieder+ |
| It was a rare opportunity: a chance to experience Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi , a song-cycle rarely-performed on account of its considerable demands on singer and pianist: most would consider very carefully before taking it on. Inspired by Wagner’s version of the Tristan and Isolde legend and its Love-Death (Liebestod) ending, it is the first of a trilogy. The performance I saw was on the Saturday morning of Leeds Lieder+, the fourth biennial festival of art-song from around the world, directed this year by pianist Malcolm Martineau. Read full review... | |
| 6-Oct-2011 Bridgewater Hall | At the emotional centre - Nicolas Altstaedt |
 Young German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt was at the emotional centre of the BBC Philharmonic’s all-Elgar concert in Manchester. An award-winner with a fast-developing global reputation, he made the opening four chords of the Cello Concerto exceptionally dramatic, more immediate than usual, as we were plunged into the composer’s agonised responses to the Great War.Read full review... | |
| 17-Jul-2011 Royal Hall | András Schiff in Harrogate |
| “You will never, ever hear greater piano playing,” said Dame Fanny Waterman, DBE, as she stood on the stage of the resplendently-refurbished Royal Hall in Harrogate. Few of us in the audience would have disagreed, not just because she is the respected oracle on these matters but because she was referring to the pianist who had just astonished us with his versions of Schubert’s Sonata in G Major and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations – András Schiff.
Read full review... | |
| 15-Jul-2011 Bridgewater Hall | Die Walküre in concert |
 Wagner's Die Walküre was split into two concert performances over two days, the first on one evening and the second on an afternoon and an evening. This review is for both.
A spot picks out a man in the Bridgewater Hall’s front row, who steps up to stand by a table in front of the Hallé Orchestra, which is ready to begin. He puts on a braided coat to become Richard Wagner. Played by Roger Allam, his lines are taken from the master’s theoretical writings, letters to the likes of Franz Liszt and King Ludwig II of Bavaria and quotations from reported conversations. He is joined by two choruses, spectral women in white - the excellent Deborah Findlay and Sara Kestelman - who provide background and pass comment. We are watching The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan, written by Gerard McBurney and directed by Neil Bartlett as a contextualising prologue which draws wittily on sources from Bakunin to Dickens and from Nietzsche to Wagner’s first wife. It is a concept pioneered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with its Beyond The Score programme.Read full review... | |
