Reviews Index
by Barry Creasy
January usually sees the arrival of the London A Cappella Festival, but the organisers have decided to let 2020 lie fallow. As compensation, though, the…
Although there were some charming musical highlights to La Nuova Musica’s A French Affair on Thursday evening, the concert seemed to suffer from a lack...
Robert Carsen’s production of La Traviata was the first staged work at the ‘new’ Fenice in 2004 and, although some of the concepts now look...
Two concerts from the London Sinfonietta chart ‘the sound across a century’. This first, led by Thierry Fischer, explores one tendril of the twentieth-century avant-garde:...
The baritone Benjamin Appl made his name singing Schubert Lieder, but his proficiency with works of an earlier era was demonstrated in his 2018...
No one who heard Christian Gerhaher sing ‘Oh du mein holder Abendstern’ in Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House in 2010 and 2016 will ever...
Shankar 100 is a year long series taking place at the Southbank Centre commemorating the centenary of the birth of Ravi Shankar. He may be...
David Lang’s Prisoner of the State is a modern day take on Fidelio, and it achieves the right balance between creating a work that speaks...
In this programme of song from French, British and German composers, one might have picked holes in minor elements, but overall the combination of baritone...
Musical Christmas miscellanies can be a bit hit or miss, but Graham Johnson’s Songmakers’ Almanac’s A Winter Birthday on Saturday was everything you’d want it...
It’s not easy to be original in baroque music in the 21st century: the composers would appear to have been discovered, the performers seem to...
What better way to take your mind off the political skulduggery of the day than a concert devoted to three of this country’s finest composers...
The Tallis Scholars’ Reflections formed their contribution to the St John’s Christmas Festival this year, and the group, under its founder-director, Peter Phillips, chose to...
It may be difficult for us to imagine a Christmas when ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ and ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ did not take...
When the English diarist John Evelyn visited the Teatro Novissimo in Venice in 1645 he recorded his impressions of the opera he saw there, Ercole...
Far la Ninna Nanna, the title of L’Arpeggiata’s Christmas themed concert is an Italian phrase meaning ‘to sing a lullaby’, and lullabies there were aplenty,...
Who is Othello? Is he a towering commander whose strength is suddenly taken from him by the machinations of a lesser man with a quicker...
For their contribution to the St John’s Christmas Festival, the a-cappella ensemble The Cardinall’s Musick presented ‘Vigilia di Natale’, a programme featuring sacred music of...
Like Orphée aux enfers, written six years earlier, Offenbach’s La belle Hélène of 1764 is a parody of an ancient myth. Both employ Ludovic Halévy...
One of the undoubtedly great productions during Edward Gardner’s tenure as Music Director of English National Opera was David Alden’s Peter Grimes. Gardner conducted the...
The Seraphin Project was set up under the aegis of King’s College Cambridge to foster musical collaboration across the generations, and to mix student musicians...
