Planet Hugill

A vividly theatrical mix of Eastern folk traditions & 17th century Italian music: MOURN from Alkanna Graeca & Figure

2026-04-17T13:34:00.005+01:00

MOURN: music by Monteverdi, Strozzi, Cesti, Gesualdo plus folk music from Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean; Figure, Frederick Waxman, Alkanna Graeca
Reviewed 16 April 2026

Pairing Eastern European folk traditions, many polyphonic, with 16th and 17th century Italian music all exploring loss and lament might seem unlikely but the performances from both singers and instrumentalists were vivid and theatrical, gripping us from start to finish

Somebody could write (or probably has written) a thesis on the way the lament and music of mourning from 16th and 17th century classical music was indebted to folk traditions, looking at the way these traditions of mourning continued in the folk traditions of the Balkans. But instead of that, Frederick Waxman's period ensemble Figure, who are never ones to shy away from risk-taking, joined forces with the vocal trio Alkanna Graeca (Alexandra Achillea, Irini Arabatzi, Dunja Botic), whose repertoire blends raw folk traditions from the Balkans, to create MOURN, a music-theatrical exploration of the experience of loss. We caught the first of two performances of MOURN at Stone Nest on 16 April 2026.

The three singers, Alexandra Achillea, Irini Arabatzi, Dunja Botic, mix classical, jazz, improvisation and folk. They demonstrated their chops in the challenging folk music of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean by starting the evening dressed in black, standing in half darkness on the balcony at Stone Nest singing Mirgangula, a piece of polyphonic folk tradition from Georgia. The result was a thrillingly raw sound that captured the visceral nature of this type of folk music. Frederick Waxman and Figure followed this with the Passacaille from Lully's Armide, a juxtaposition that should not have worked but did, the Georgian folk piece having a greater complexity than we might have imagined and the Lully gaining in directness. It helped that Figure was configured as a small but mighty ensemble of Naomi Burrell and James Toll, violins, Sergio BUcheli, lute, Jan Zahourek, double bass, and Waxman on chamber organ.

The instrumentalists were joined by Konstantinos Glynos in kanun, a member of the zither family played with picks held in the hands (Glynos' seemed to be playing with metal ones). Rather disappointingly, he appeared to only play in the folk pieces. But overall the ensemble blended between the two with the string players supporting the singers in the folk pieces and sometimes contributing vividly, and then in the other direction the vocalists took centre stage in works by Monteverdi, Cesti and Strozzi.

Alexandra Achillea directed, whilst movement and dramaturgy was credited to Konstantina-Maria Spyropoulou and though there were no overall narrative, the various movements flowed into each other. The audience chose to applause after each number, but the evening would have worked rather well without. Some elements of drama were present, a bride being dressed and then bleeding in the next number, a moment where two of the singers seemed to be sewing. But though this was artful, with dramatic lighting, the music remained a constant presence and the vibrancy of the performances from singers and instrumentalists ensured we were gripped.

The second folk piece, Janines c'i pane syte from Albania gave us the chance to hear Glynos's kanun in action, then this led rather strikingly into Gesualdo's O vos omnes with the vocalism bringing those expressive raw elements from the folk pieces into Gesualdo's more polished world to striking effect. Skaros from Epirus followed.

Then whilst the three women sang Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa, making the piece rather edgier than we are used to, they dressed a bride in elaborate folk costume, but she came to pieces in Disserratevi Abissi from Cesti's opera L'Argia where her actions in what could have been self-harm (and involved fake blood) matched the words - Throw open your gates, abysses, I have come to weep. I am guilty of betrayal, I have wrought deceptions. This was immediately followed by a fabulous piece from Thrace, Giati poul m'den kelaidis where the three vocalists throaty style of singing was a fabulous contrast to and comment on the preceding pieces. This sequence seemed to end with Barbara Strozzi's Lagrime mie staged dramatically to mirror the edgy intensity of the singing. Here, I must single out Sergio Bucheli's theorbo playing throughout the evening he managed to fill the auditorium in a way that balanced the vivid vocal performances.

Folk pieces from the Vlach people and from Epirus moved theatrically and provided a visual commentary to some thrilling singing. This sequence ended with a powerful, unaccompanied account of Mor'Deropolitissa from Epirus which was contrasted with an instrumental transcription of Lascia ch'io pianga from Handel's Rinaldo. It shouldn't have worked but it did. The show ended with a final folk piece from Croatoslovenia which brought everyone together.

The sight lines at Stone Nest were not always ideal and this would be a show that might benefit from a more sympathetic auditorium. But that said, the sound quality was vivid indeed and the atmosphere in the former church was definitely right for the show.

This was one of those evening sui generis where the vivid nature of the performances grabbed you and where the unlikely juxtapositions proved to be not unlikely at all. Alexandra Achillea and Frederick Waxman's ideas seemed to develop into a memorable evening indeed.

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Elsewhere on this blog

Beautifully wrought & intensely serious: Kitty Whately & Julius Drake explore the songs of Madeleine Dring - record review
Cross-cultural cross currents: Jasdeep Singh Degun with Fantasia Orchestra in Terry Riley's iconic In C performed by string orchestra, piano, sitar and tabla at Smith Square Hall - concert review
Bridging worlds: premiere of Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 by Academy of St Martin in the Fields plus Bacewicz, Price, Carolyn Shaw - review
Elaborate vocal lines, aching beauty & expressive pain: The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby in I Voci Segreti - concert review
Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE" - guest article
The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week - concert review
Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
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Orpheus returns, raag, rhythm & a new sitar concerto: Jasdeep Singh Degun to be artist in residence at Barbican Centre for 2026/27

2026-04-17T11:52:00.001+01:00

Jasdeep Singh Degun (Photo: Govert Driessen)

Leeds-born sitar player and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun continues to push the envelope. His recent concert with Tom Featherstonhaugh and Fantasia Orchestra [see my review] served as a digest of the story so far with excerpts from Degun's first album and first sitar concerto, yet his most recent album Jogkauns (on Real World Records) is structured as a traditional Indian classical concert, presenting the entirety of the music within a single raag.

Now, London audiences will get the chance to explore Degun's work further as it has been announced that he is an artist in residence at the Barbican Centre for the 2026/27 season with three major events planned, building on Degun's achievement becoming the first British Asian musician to receive the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award, marking a significant moment in his career and the wider cultural landscape.

The residency culminates in the London premiere of critically acclaimed reimagining of Claudio Monteverdi’s Orpheus. Already announced as part of Opera North's 2026/27 season this is a revival the original 2022 production which combined Monteverdi's score with new material bringing together artists from Indian and Western classical traditions in a large-scale cross-cultural work. Degun is returning to the work as co-musical director alongside harpsichordist Ashok Gupta, with tenor James Way as Orpheus. Opera North is touring the production with performances at Leeds Playhouse, and in Bradford, Liverpool, Leicester and London's Barbican.

Monteverdi/Jasdeep Singh Degun: Orpheus - Shahbaz Hussain on tabla, RN Prakash on ghatam, Mark Wagstaff on percussion, Sergio Bucheli on theorbo, Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar and Andrew Long on violin - Opera North, 2022 (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Before then there are two other occasions to hear Degun at the Barbican. In October 2026, Degun joins tabla maestro Sukhvinder Singh ‘Pinky’, as part of the Darbar Festival which celebrates the distinct strands of the Indian classical tradition over five days. For their event, Degun and Singh will be guiding audiences through the infinite riches of raag and rhythm.

Then in January 2027 comes the premiere of Degun's new Sitar Concerto commissioned by the Barbican and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Kirill Karabits alongside works by John Adams (The Chairman Dances) and Sergei Prokofiev (Symphony No. 7).

Jasdeep Singh Degun commented, "I’ve always seen my work as a part of the wider musical landscape in the UK, moving naturally between different contexts and tradition. This residency allows me to share this in a meaningful way, and marks a significant milestone for me personally. I’m very much looking forward to presenting my music and connecting with new audiences."

75 glorious years: arising out of work to celebrate the Guildhall of St George, the King's Lynn Festival is in celebratory mood

2026-04-16T07:51:00.000+01:00

The Guildhall of St George in King's Lynn (Image: Matthew Usher)

Founded in 1951, the King's Lynn Festival has a long and distinguished history. It arose because Alexander Penrose and Lord and Lady Fermoy wanted to save the Guildhall of St George – now believed to be the oldest working theatre in the UK that once hosted Shakespeare – which was nearly lost after the Second World War. Penrose’s vision of using it as an arts centre captured the imagination of Lord and Lady Fermoy. Together, they formed a trust, raised restoration funds, and transformed the Guildhall into a cultural hub.

Now, the festival is celebrating its 75th anniversary with two weeks of events from 12 to 25 July 2026 encompassing a diverse programme of music, talks, exhibitions and events. There is a memorial recital for Ruth, Lady Fermoy being given by pianist Boris Gilburg, as well as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's Eroica Symphony which closed that first festival. There are visits from BBC New Generation Artists, and Coffee Concerts showcasing a range of young artists. Other distinguished visitors include two of the Kanneh-Mason Siblings, the Academy of Ancient Music, guitarist Craig Ogden, and baritone Roderick Williams is giving two concerts

This year, things open with a concert by Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band encompassing Elgar, Eric Coates and Berlioz. In a more challenging vein, Contemporary Consort invites listeners to explore the music of Mark-Anthony Turnage with a concert putting his chamber music next to that of Stravinsky, Copland and Bernstein, then the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective bring music clarinet quintets by Coleridge-Taylor and Brahms.

The Guildhall Singers, conductor Andres Hernandez Salazar premiere a new piece by Norfolk--based composer James McConnel in a programme that moves from Purcell and Lassus to Mantyjarvi, Whitacre and Shearing.

Siblings Sheku and Issata Kanneh-Mason bring their distinctive musicality to music by Mendelssohn, Nadia Boulanger, Schumann and Rebecca Clarke (a transcription of her Viola Sonata). Anne Heemsker, Kate Bennett Wadsworth and David Wright (flute, cello and harpsichord) explore the chamber music of the two great contemporaries Bach and Telemann. The Novo Quartet, BBC New Generation Artists, pair quartets by Haydn and Mendelssohn.

At St Nicholas' Chapel, organist Francesca Massey will be presenting an eclectic recital of organ music from Bach to Frances Pott. Still in St Nicholas Chapel, the viol duo Jacqui Roberson-Wade and Peter Wendland will be exploring music from pre-Revolutionary France. Bojan Cicic directs the Academy of Ancient Music in a programme of Italian concertos, mixing Vivaldi with Mossi, Locatelli, Velentini and Corelli with music for one, two and four solo violins.

The King's Lynn Festival Chorus are joined by violinist Charlie Lovell-Jones, baritone Roderick Williams, pianist Ella O'Neill and conductor Ben Horden for RVW's The Lark Ascending, and Five Mystical Songs, plus Elgar's Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands. Roderick Williams returns with pianist Iain Burnside for a recital that puts cherished English song by Vaughan Williams, Gurney and Howells, alongside Rhian Samuels and Vaughan Williams arrangements of songs from the Appalachian Mountains.

Guitarist Craig Ogden will be taking listeners on a journey from Fantasy to flamenco, and Dowland's Foundry mark the composer's 400th anniversary.

There are five coffee concerts, with the Novo Quartet returning for Mozart and Nielson; Joel Munday, violin and Julian Trevelyan, piano in sonatas by Mozart and Brahms, plus Ravel's Tzigane; Rose McLachlan, piano plays Schubert and Chopin; Sirius Chau, flute and Gwenellian Llyr, harp in Spohr, Debussy and more; and the Paddington Trio in Haydn and Beethoven's Archduke Trio.

On a lighter note, Magpie Lane present an evening of traditional English song and dance, whilst the Bowjangles quartet takes things in a more cabaret direction, and the Pasadena Roof Orchestra encourages us to take a step back to a more glamorous era.

The Ruth, Lady Fermoy Memorial Concert features pianist Boris Giltburg in a virtuoso programme encompassing the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, Liszt's Sonata in B minor, preludes by Rachmaninoff and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. The Festival concludes with Adam Hickox conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with BBC New Generation Artist, Hana Chang) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, a work which concluded the first festival in 1951.

Full details from the Festival website.

Beautifully wrought & intensely serious: Kitty Whately & Julius Drake explore the songs of Madeleine Dring

2026-04-15T11:53:00.001+01:00

Through the Centuries: Songs by Madeleine Dring; Kitty Whately, Julius Drake; Chandos
Reviewed 15 April 2026

If you thought Madeleine Dring's songs were confined to camp nightclubs then think again. Here Kitty Whately and Julius Drake mine the composer's intensely serious side, revealing a woefully neglected and wilfully misunderstood composer.

Despite training at the Royal College of Music in the years before the Second World War alongside women such as Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring's reputation is much more that of an accidental composer: her songs simply happenings around her career in the theatre. And her reputation not helped that perhaps her best known song is her setting of Betjeman's Song of the Nightclub Proprietress where the rather camp, musical hall atmosphere is to the fore.

On this new disc on Chandos from mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Julius Drake, Through the centuries: songs of Madeleine Dring, they take an entirely serious and focused view of Dring the songwriter. We are treated to 20 songs from across Dring's career, though many are in fact of uncertain date. Apart from the last song, an arrangement of Cole Porter's In the still of the night, Dring the music theatre composer is entirely absent. Her 'day job' was as an actress and entertainer, writing some two dozen scores for the BBC and music for West End shows and reviews. As Lewis Foreman's excellent booklet note points out, because she often wrote songs at short notice, she did not deal with them systematically. As a result, we have to take each song on its merits rather than assigning early, middle or late.

Dring came from a theatrical family (her father was a ventrioquist) and was studying at the Royal College of Music junior department at the age of ten. She studied with Herbert Howells as well as having lessons from Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. In style, her music is by no means cutting edge, and certainly she lacks the harmonic adventurousness of those female contemporaries mentioned above. What she creates, however, is a well-made song that is fearless in its intentions towards the words. These are songs that are about words and music, rather than simply being delightful melodic felicities. She does have an ear for a tune, but never lets herself get carried away.

We open with a group of songs all of which set period words, 17th and 18th century. Some texts are familiar from other composers but Dring takes her own way. Love is a sickness is a striking piece of dramatic declaration, Echoes combines a slow swing with a tender melancholy in its seductive line, Encouragements to a lover is perkily delightful, and The Enchantment is melodically memorable

Melisande sets words by a friend, Daniel Ferguson Aiken, a New Zealand-born poet who also wrote the text for Dring's opera Cupboard Love. Melisande is touching with a strong whiff of wistful melancholy along with melodically memorable motifs. We return to older texts for a setting of Philip Sidney, My true love hath my heart which can be securely dated to 1944. It is a powerful, serious setting of familiar words that manages to render them something new.

Love and Time is a set of four songs composed in the 1970s. Each song seems to take us through a different phase of life, the texts being 17th century. The most striking thing is the way Dring gives each song a thematically related piano prelude, often contrasting this with nearly unaccompanied voice. The first begins in a Debussy-ish style, but the rather free vocal line moves intriguingly away from this. The second begins in the same style before launching unexpectedly into a more formal structure. The third is rather Kurt Weill-ish and the last ends up in a region of calm intent that Whately makes meaningful and moving.

Weep you no more sad fountains takes words set by Dowland but creates in them a little gem, lyrical and touching. We hear three of Dring's Seven Shakespeare Songs which were published in the 1990s (no word on when they were written). The Cuckoo is melodically memorably yet harmonically spicy, as Dring takes a determinedly different route. Take O take those lips away has a gentle, and surprising, lilt to it but never fails in its emotional message. It was a lover is, of course, insouciant but the piano has a distinct whiff of the theatre song to it. A complete delight. The Faithless Lover has words set both by Byrd and Roger Quilter, so no pressure there! The piano part is rhythmic and intense, contributing to the anxious feeling of the vocal line. Jazzy, perhaps, but distinctly edgy and dramatically apposite.

Four Night Songs date from the 1976, and again set words by a friend, this time Michael Armstrong, a painter and a poet who sent Dring verses, and she chose these four. Dring seems to be exploring a rather darker, edgier world. Holding the Night begins with a terrific piece of night music in the piano, followed by the voice alone, a device Dring seems to light. The song has an intensity and a complex darkness that is absent from some of the other songs. Whilst some of her other songs retain an element of crowd pleasing about them, there is nothing here. Frosty Night is urgent and intent with a dazzling piano evocation of the frosty night, yet there is a dark intent feeling here to as the poet likens the dark to his heart. Through the Centuries is quiet and intent, focused and considered with the words brought to the fore. There is less darkness here and the piece is melodically ingratiating though Whately and Drake give us moments of powerful intensity. Separation was left incomplete at Dring's death and completed by her husband. It is a piece of focused quiet, beautifully wrought.

We end with Dring in more jeu d'esprit mode with her Cole Porter arrangement, except there is something intent and serious here too!

Clearly there is a lot more to Madeleine Dring than we have realised and whilst others have explored some of this territory (I remember a fine disc from Robert Tear), Whately and Drake manage to make us look at this anew. I think there is room for exploration of this side to Dring alongside her camper, music-theatre inspired pieces but what Whately and Drake do is focus our attention on Dring's beautifully wrought songs and the intensely serious side to her art.

Through the centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring
Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)
Recorded 31 March – 2 April 2025, Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk
CHANDOS CHAN 20390 1CD [63:24]

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

Cross-cultural cross currents: Jasdeep Singh Degun with Fantasia Orchestra in Terry Riley's iconic In C performed by string orchestra, piano, sitar and tabla at Smith Square Hall - concert review
Bridging worlds: premiere of Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 by Academy of St Martin in the Fields plus Bacewicz, Price, Carolyn Shaw - review
Elaborate vocal lines, aching beauty & expressive pain: The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby in I Voci Segreti - concert review
Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE" - guest article
The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week - concert review
Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
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An evening of connection, reflection, & celebration: Renell Shaw's The Windrush Suite at Kings Place

2026-04-14T10:36:00.002+01:00

As part of Kings Place's Memory Unwrapped season composer, songwriter and producer Renell Shaw has a year-long artist residency. Shaw’s work bridges theatre, contemporary composition and artist led music, and his credits include music for The Crucible and Othello for Shakespeare’s Globe, Is God Is for the Royal Court Theatre, , as well as winning an Ivor Novello Award for Jazz Composition for Small Ensemble.

He is currently developing a new opera with Music Theatre Wales based on Yasuke, a samurai of African origin who served Oda Nobunaga between in the 16th century. Set to premiere in 2027, the work extends his practice further into long form music drama.

On 25 June, Shaw will be presenting two works at Kings Place as part of Memory Unwrapped. The Windrush Suite and Echo in the Bones both feature on Shaw's albums, and this event will be the first ever performance with a full live ensemble.

The Windrush Suite pays homage to Shaw’s grandparents' journey from the Caribbean to Britain telling their stories of love, pain, struggle, and triumph through a fusion of jazz, spoken word and Caribbean traditions. Echo in the Bones explores what it means to be Black British through the eyes of the Windrush generation’s children - weaving music, history, and storytelling into a moving portrait of resistance, legacy, and belonging.

The concert features and ensemble of 12 musicians led by Shaw, mixing classical, jazz and contemporary including cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, multi-instrumentalist Orphy Robinson and legendary saxophonist Jean Toussaint.

As a central pillar of his 2026 residency at Kings Place, Renell Shaw leads a mentoring programme, The Artist’s Room. This is a bespoke masterclass series designed to bridge the gap between creative intuition and professional longevity. By mentoring two distinct cohorts, Young Artists (16–18) and an Open Room (19+), Shaw fosters a collaborative environment where aspiring musicians and creators can refine their musicality while gaining essential industry insights directly from a master storyteller.

The concluding part of Shaw's planned trilogy is planned for 9 October when a new commission, Remember Us Tomorrow is premiered during Black History Month. Shaw's most personal work to date, it asks what it means to be of Afro-Caribbean heritage after three generations in Britain, raising a fourth generation in a world that is both hyper-connected and deeply divided. What stories must we protect? And how do we ensure we are remembered as tomorrow takes shape.

Full details from Kings Place's website.

Music at the Heart of the community: Sinfonia Cymru take us from Latin America and France to concerts in local venues across Wales

2026-04-14T09:29:00.004+01:00

One of Sinfonia Cymru's Cymuned Sessions

Sinfonia Cymru is a collective of dynamic professional musicians all aged under 30 committed to taking music across the length and breadth of Wales. Whilst the do perform regularly at some of Wales’ most popular arts venues, including Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Cardiff), The Riverfront (Newport) and Theatr Clwyd (Mold). They also want to perform in smaller communities and these events include the annual free ‘Cymuned’ tour, which visits museums, pubs, miners’ institutes and village halls across Wales.

Later this month, the ensemble is joined by Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong [whom we heard earlier this year in one of Opera Rara's Salon Concerts, see my review] for Latin American Song, a journey through Latin America from the lush lyricism of María Grever to the rhythmic brilliance of Esther Forero, with each song written by a female composer, with events in Rhosygilwen, Mold and Cardiff. (24 April - 2 May) Then there are two opportunities to hear Tour de France, the ensemble's celebration of French music with piece by Lili Boulanger, Jean Françaix and Saint-Saëns in Newport and Barry. (6 & 7 May).

On a somewhat different scale, Sinfonia Cymru's Cymuned Sessions will be taking music to the heart of the community. [cymuned is Welsh for community]. They will be bringing live music to local areas, presenting free hour-long concerts. These family-friendly concerts take place in all sorts of venues across Wales: village halls, care homes, fruit and veg shops, cafés, rugby clubs and more.

First off is a trio of flute, harp and cello travelling to Chepstow, Maesteg, Risca, Cemmaes and Neuadd Llan Ffestiniog Hall from 6 to 17 May, then later in May and June there will be two further ensembles touring to venues including Solva, Narbeth, Tre’ddol, Wrexham Pontyberem and Pentredŵr. All events are free but it is wise to book.

Full details from the Sinfonia Cymru website.

Signs, Games & Messages: Lewes Chamber Music Festival 2026 celebrates Kurtág

2026-04-14T08:31:00.001+01:00

From 11 to 14 June 2026, cellist and artistic director Beatrice Philips leads an ensemble of 15 chamber musicians and soloists for the 2026 Lewes Chamber Music Festival with a wonderfully diverse programme, celebrating Kurtag’s 100th anniversary via the festival’s theme: Exploring musical legacy, along with locally sourced refreshments and great cake!

The music of Kurtág threads its way through the festival with various incarnations of Signs Games & Messages, plus 12 Microludes for String Quartet, Hommage a R. Schumann, Jaketok and his transcriptions of Bach cantatas for piano four-hands (written for Kurtág to play with his wife.).

And this music has provided other threads that run through the programme. Alongside Kurtág's Bach, there are extracts from Bach's Goldberg Variations in its original version and in transcription for string trio. Whilst Kurtág's Hommage a R Schumann is written for the same instrumental combination as Schumann's Fairtytale for piano, clarinet and viola. And further Schumann includes his Adagio & Allegro for horn and piano, Six pieces in canonic form, and Piano Quartet. Plus there is a suite for piano, violin and clarinet by Darius Milhaud, with whom Kurtág had lessons in Paris.

Other homages include Ligeti's Horn Trio 'Hommage a Brahms', alongside Brahms' Sonata for viola and piano in E flat, and Sextet No.2 in G major. Other works include Ravel's Piano Trio, and music by Sally Beamish, Dora Pejacevic, Martinu, Bartok and Webern. The Saturday evening concert includes Janacek's String Quartet No. 2 'Intimate Letters' and tenor Laurence Kilsby joins the festival for Britten's Les Illuminations.

The gala concert on Saturday evening not only features a double length event with music by Kurtág, Schumann, Janacek and Britten, but refreshments which are the result of community efforts along with locally sourced wine. And the coffee for Sunday morning's coffee concert is locally are the result of community efforts and locally sourced wine, whilst the cakes served are locally-made and have gained a reputation for being outstanding.

Full details from the festival website.

A new festival in Glasgow and Edinburgh recalls a forgotten 19th century Scottish musical pioneer, Helen Hopekirk

2026-04-13T10:22:00.003+01:00

Helen Hopekirk - National Galleries of Scotland collection (Photo: National Galleries of Scotland)

A new festival is hoping to bring back the name of Helen Hopekirk. Born in Peebles in 1856, she was one of the most accomplished pianists and composers of her generation, and her accomplishments including playing her Piano Concerto (now lost) with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1900.

A new festival, the Helen Hopekirk Festival will mark her 170th anniversary with events in Glasgow and Edinburgh from 18 to 24 May 2026.

A young trio of Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduates, Bubblyjock Collective will be presenting a concert featuring Hopekirk alongside other neglected names including Isobel Dunlop, Marie Dare and Claire Liddel. Dr Hannah Roberts will give a lecture-recital exploring the folk roots of Hopekirk's music, performing her work and unpacking the Scottish songs and Celtic traditions that shaped it, followed by a masterclass for young musicians.

Gary Steigerwalt and Dana Müller are the world's foremost Hopekirk scholars and performers and Steigerwalt’s recording Helen Hopekirk: Piano Music was the first album ever devoted to her music. They will be flying in from Arizona for a piano duo concert devoted to Hopekirk's music.

There is also a competition for young pianists and organists placing Scottish repertoire at the heart of young musicians' training. Free and open to the public, the closes with a winners' gala concert.

Helen Hopekirk studied with Scottish composer Alexander Mackenzie and with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig. She planned to continue her studies with Franz Liszt, but after his death studied instead with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. She lived in Vienna until 1892 and then she and her husband moved to Paris. Her first large scale work, the Concertstück in D Minor for piano and orchestra, was written in Paris in 1893–94, and she performed it with the Scottish Orchestra under Georg Henschel in Edinburgh and Dundee in November 1894. She accepted an invitation to teach at the New England Conservatory, later leaving it to teach privately and to perform. She and her husband became American citizens in 1918, and her career was then focused on the USA.

Full details from the festival website.

From London to Jerusalem: America period instrument ensemble Apollo's Fire return to London for a second residency at St Martin in the Fields

2026-04-13T09:51:00.002+01:00

Apollo's Fire

Apollo's Fire, the American period instrument ensemble led by its founder Jeanette Sorrell, is coming to the UK for a short tour featuring the company's second residency at the Church of St Martin in the Fields. They are at St Martin in the Fields on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April and complete the mini-residency with a concert at Snape Maltings.

On Friday lunchtime there is Pubs and Palaces of 1610, a chamber recital exploring music from the crossroads of baroque and folk traditions, featuring duo and trio performances by five artists from the ensemble. Then the early evening concert sees Apollo's Fire joined by musicians from the English Baroque Soloists for Fencing Match – Duelling Double Concertos, with double concertos by Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach, plus dances by Rameau. Then late evening there is Baklava Bash: A Middle Eastern Celebration in the crypt, an evocation of a Middle-Eastern café with music from Israeli recorder virtuoso Daphna Mor and Palestinian-American oud master Ronnie Malley and friends.

Saturday sees the ensemble's residency conclude with O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths, a musical tour through Jerusalem and its ancient Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters, as surprising cross-influences emerge, as a Sephardic ballad leads to a classical Arabic love song, and selections from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 echo the exotic and rapturous singing of the Jewish cantors in the temples.

On Sunday 26 April, they will be again joined by musicians from the English Baroque Soloists for Fencing Match – Duelling Double Concertos at Snape Maltings.

Full details from Apollo's Fire's website.

Cross-cultural cross currents: Jasdeep Singh Degun with Fantasia Orchestra in Terry Riley's iconic In C performed by string orchestra, piano, sitar and tabla at Smith Square Hall

2026-04-11T10:44:00.000+01:00

Jasdeep Singh Degun, Gurdain Rayatt, Fantasia Orchestra, Tom Fetherstonhaugh - Smith Square Hall (Photo: Pablo Strong)

Terry Riley: In C, Jasdeep Singh Degun, Philip Glass, Rameau; Jasdeep Singh Degun, Gurdain Rayatt, Fantasia Orchestra, Tom Fetherstonhaugh; Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 10 April 2026

Minimalism, classical Indian music & French Baroque in an entrancing mix which saw the iconic In C including sitar and tabla alongside Jasdeep Singh Degun's own music in performances full of infectious joy

Sitar player and composer Jasdeep Sing Degun joined Tom Fetherstonhaugh and Fantasia Orchestra for a concert at Smith Square Hall on Friday 10 April 2026 with a wide-ranging programme which saw Degun, on sitar, and tabla player Gurdain Rayatt joining the orchestra in Terry Riley's iconic In C alongside music by Degun, Philip Glass and Rameau.

The orchestra consisted of an ensemble of 21 strings with Fetherstonhaugh playing the piano for the first half. We began with Degun's In Search of Redemption from his first album, Anomaly. We began with Fetherstonhaugh playing a gentle melody on the piano, then as sitar and strings joined they played the same melody in free heterophonic fashion. As the piece developed we became aware of Degun, the composer, adding layers each one with a different timbre and playing subtly different rhythms. The work ended with a fast riff for sitar (Degun) and tabla (Rayatt) over a string drone.

Jasdeep Singh Degun, Fantasia Orchestra - Smith Square Hall (Photo: Pablo Strong)

Terry Riley's In C is not so much a composed piece of music as a recipe. The 'instructions' consist of 53 modules that fit on a single page, each module being a short musical phrase. The work can be played by any combination of instruments and Riley suggests about three dozen performers, each acting individually. Here we had the 21 strings plus Fetherstonhaugh on piano, Degun on sitar and Rayatt on tabla. The result was entrancing. The presence of sitar and tabla in the sound mix inflected things towards Minimalism's Indian influences, but overall there was amazing textural variety with wide variations in rhythm and timbre. It is quite a long piece, after all it takes some two dozen people quite a time to work their way individually through 53 motifs whilst creating something musical. What Fantasia Orchestra achieved was something that managed to be compelling and rather magical.

After the interval, with Fetherstonhaugh now conducting, we began with the Thunderstorm from Rameau's Platée (without sitar and tabla). Fast and vivid cascading scales were played with great verve and elan. Degun and Rayatt then return to join the orchestra for Degun's Rageshri. Here we had fast melodic lines played in heterophonic fashion, full of catchy rhythms. There were spotlight moments for sitar with some bravura playing from Degun and for tabla, leading into a long solo section for the two (with the strings silent). Here it became apparent that Degun and Rayatt were long-time collaborators as they had fun 'duelling'. The strings finally rejoined them for an exciting finish.

Then we came to more Rameau, this time Tristes apprêts from Castor et Pollux with Degun playing the vocal line on the sitar. He is trained in gayaki ang-a, a lyrical sitar style that emulates the human voice, and here we got a real sense of an Indian classical singer inflecting Rameau's vocal line in distinctive ways. Rameau was present but heard through a different, rather entrancing filter that focused on the ornamentation and the transitions between notes.

Degun and Rayatt took a back seat for the next piece, Philip Glass's Echorus which featured two solo violins (Millie Ashton and Hana Mizuta-Spencer). The work was written in 1995 for Yehudi Menuhin. Things began with the soloists in elaborate arpeggios over chugging violas, then things expanded with longer ripieno violin notes over the texture. Whilst the sound worlds are vastly different, Glass's use of multiple layers, each one different, linked back (or forward) to Degun's own writing.

We ended with one of Degun's stand-out pieces, his sitar concerto Arya which was written for the Orchestra of Opera North (where he was artist in residence) in 2020. We heard the second movement. Degun explained that whilst 'aria' in Western usage means a sung vocal piece with accompaniment, in Hindi (and Sanskrit) it means precious gem. We began with sitar over throbbing strings with the solo line only gradually getting more prominent. As the orchestral material became more rhythmic, Degun's sitar took over and dazzled us with flurries of scales leading to a solo moment in free rhapsodic style leading to more spectacular finger-work. After a moment for Rayatt's tabla, things finished with a virtuoso duel for the two of them.

Jasdeep Singh Degun, Gurdain Rayatt, Fantasia Orchestra, Tom Fetherstonhaugh - Smith Square Hall (Photo: Pablo Strong)

Degun is a traditionally trained sitar player, and his most recent disc Jogkauns (on Real World Records) is structured as a traditional Indian classical concert, presenting the entirety of the music within a single raag. But when I interviewed him in 2023 [see my interview] he described himself as just a'random guy from Leeds', and collaboration has always been important. For this concert we heard various strands of Degun's performing career alongside the enterprising Fantasia Orchestra. Degun and Featherstonhaugh's eclectic programme had a real daring to it but also a feeling of enjoyment. You sensed that In C was a real challenge, but the performers sheer joy at the end was completely entrancing.

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Elsewhere on this blog

Bridging worlds: premiere of Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 by Academy of St Martin in the Fields plus Bacewicz, Price, Carolyn Shaw - review
Elaborate vocal lines, aching beauty & expressive pain: The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby in I Voci Segreti - concert review
Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE" - guest article
The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week - concert review
Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
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Gregory Spears opera Fellow Travelers celebrates its 10th anniversary with a nationwide USA tour collaborating with the Lavender Names Project

2026-04-11T09:15:00.000+01:00

Gregory Spears: Fellow Travelers - Andy Acosta, Joseph Lattanzi - Seattle Opera (Photo: Sunny Martini)

They served their country. Their country fired them. And it's still happening

Gregory Spears opera Fellow Travelers, with a libretto by Greg Pierce, premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016, directed by Kevin Newbury. Since then the work has been staged by more than 15 opera companies including London’s University College Opera.

The work is based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling 2007 novel which tells a love-story set against the Lavender Scare, a piece of LGBTQ+ history from the 1950s that is still relatively unknown. The opera speaks to the experiences of those who were banned from government employment and subject to humiliating investigations because of their sexuality. The novel went on to form the basis for the 2023 TV series starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, which reached wide audiences.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Spears' opera, director Kevin Newbury's production is undertaking a nationwide tour of the USA. The tour launched in February and March at Seattle Opera and Portland Opera. In his review of the Seattle Opera premiere, Thomas May said in The Seattle Times that 'Though rooted in fear from seven decades ago, the story feels unsettlingly present' and described the score as 'a sound world at once intimate and unexpectedly expansive, its modest forces carrying emotional weight well beyond their scale — much like the opera itself. '

The USA tour, one of the largest consortium projects ever attempted in the US opera industry, continues this summer with performances at San Diego Opera (July 10-12) and New York’s Glimmerglass Festival (July 18-Aug. 16), and 2027 performances begin with the opera’s Texas premiere at Austin Opera (Feb. 6-7), with Andy Acosta and Joseph Lattanzi in the two leading roles.

For this tour, the staging broadens its impact through the Lavender Names Project, a pioneering collaboration with the American LGBTQ+ Museum, ALL OUT, and the Lambda Archives of San Diego building community around the country by shedding light on a forgotten chapter of LGBTQ+ history that echoes today's political climate, which is again marked by the policing of identity. This nationwide, grassroots archival research and community outreach initiative will galvanize libraries, universities and LGBTQ+ organizations in each city.

Gregory Spears: Fellow Travelers - the closing scene at Seattle Opera (Photo: Sunny Martini)

Over the past year, the Lavender Names Project has collected photos and stories of members of the LGBTQ+ community who were systematically discriminated against, fired and mistreated by federal and local governments in the United States, including the military, from the "Lavender Scare" in 1953, to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the 1990s, to today. The tour includes curated lobby installations for each performance venue which will feature these collected stories and exhibits detailing the history of the Lavender Scare.

Bridging worlds: premiere of Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 by Academy of St Martin in the Fields alongside music by Grazyna Bacewicz, Florence Price, Carolyn Shaw

2026-04-10T13:29:00.004+01:00

Bridging Worlds: Grazyna Bacewicz, Florence Price, Carolyn Shaw, Eleanor Alberga; Elena Urioste, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Tomo Keller; Church of St Martin in the Fields
Reviewed 9 April 2026

The premiere of Eleanor Alberga's vividly inventive second symphony alongside works by three other women composers spanning two continents and two centuries in compelling performances

Back in 2020, a wind ensemble from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields gave the first performance since its premiere in 1993 of Eleanor Alberga's Nightscape, then in Autumn 2021 the Academy launched The Beacon Project, a digital offering of educational resources and performance films that shine a light on three beacons of contemporary music: Eleanor Alberga, Sally Beamish, and Errollyn Wallen, with the first film to be issued being Alberga's Nightscape. In 2022, I chatted to Eleanor Alberga about Nightscape and also about her first symphony, which she had just completed [see my interview].

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields were so taken with Alberga's music that the idea of a commission developed and finally, last night (9 April 2026), the Academy of St Martin in the Fields directed from the violin by Tomo Keller premiered Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 at the Church of St Martin in the Fields as part of a concert entitled Bridging Worlds which featured Grazyna Bacewicz's Concerto for String Orchestra, Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 1 (with soloist Elena Urioste) and Carolyn Shaw's Entr'acte.

It was a fascinating programme of 20th and 21st century music by women composers moving between Europe and America. The first half focused on the mid-Century period as Price's Violin Concerto No. 1 dates from 1939 whilst Bacewicz's piece dates from 1948. Then in the second half we had Shaw's 2011 work and Alberga's immediately contemporary one.

We began with Bacewicz's Concerto for Orchestra, one of her best-known works. It is written in her vigorous, neoclassical style with harmonies that are spiky but which stayed just on the right side of the Soviet authorities in Poland at the time. The opening movement was vigorous and strenuous, the sound vivid and very present. Whilst the music did ease off and folk-like material appeared, the piece was constantly changing and restless with the players performing with both precision and amazing vigour. The second movement, Andante, was lyrical yet rather expressionist, developing into richly expressive textures. For all the spiky elements to the harmony, there was something richly romantic about the mood. The finale was all impulsive vigour and infectious rhythm, played with a great intensity of manner. Thought the music pushed onward, the players brought a sense of joy to it, with a vital and uplifting end.

Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 1 is one of the scores that was found in a cache of manuscripts discovered in 2009 her former home, one of a number of pieces by her that would have been lost otherwise. Written in 1939 at the apex of her career, the work remained unperformed during her lifetime.

It is a big romantic work where Price's music material seems to weave in motifs that are inspired by African-American music yet never quite quote. The opening featured a restless orchestral introduction with intriguing harmonies that led to a rhapsodic violin statement where there was almost a moment of Mendelssohn. The violin's dialogue with the orchestra also hinted at RVW's lark. The movement's rhapsodic drama was punctuated by more lyrical moments and plenty of bravura, cadenza-like writing. The ending was a short, vigorous moto perpetuo. For all the romanticism of the work, it was certainly a very full-on violin part, played with engaging warmth and real personality by Elena Urioste. The second movement was lyrical and romantic, the violin's singing melody often in dialogue with the orchestra. Price created some quite rich, busy orchestral textures over which Urioste's violin soared. The finale moved between a vigorous orchestral contribution and rhapsodic violin writing. The music was constantly moving, leading to a vigorous, upbeat ending.

After the interval was Caroline Shaw's Entr'acte. Written in 2011 for string quartet, Shaw arranged it for string orchestra in 2014. The inspiration was the transition from the minuet to the trio in Haydn's String quartet Op. 77 no. 2 and the work is a seemingly restless exploration of transitions from one musical texture to another. The memorable opening featured short motifs with significant use of the space between. There was a sense of constant motion, the music played with great intensity as textures moved through vivid pizzicato, urgent string crossing and a dazzling array of others before returning to the opening material, yet this was not the end and the work evaporated in cello arpeggios. The result is a dazzling display, particularly when played by a full body of strings.

Eleanor Alberga's Symphony No. 2 deliberately uses Haydnesque forces of strings with two oboes and two horns. Much of the writing felt quite string dominated and though there were lots of solo opportunities for the oboe, her use of the wind was often more for colour. Because of the limited forces, she talked about writing divisi for the strings to bring added richness and commented that she hoped that the work was "still something Haydn might recognise a bit".

The long first movement began with a sense of anxiety and anticipation with lyrical oboe roulades echoed by the strings. And engaging rhythmic texture began a sense of urgent, onward motion with the oboe wafting over the strings. The strenuous sometimes neoclassical texture rather reminded me of the Bacewicz and the two works made an apt pairing. The movement featured moments when things wound down, time was suspended and often the harmonies grew rich and sonorous, but energy always returned with vivid engaging rhythms. At the end, after a final pause point the quiet scurrying of the strings moved ever upwards into the violins in what Alberga described as the work's tiny scherzo.

The slow movement kept those high violins, weaving in an around each other, then joined by the other instruments into some gorgeous textures. An oboe melody over throbbing strings provided material for the whole orchestra, but eventually the music unwound the richness evaporating into transparency and eerie oboe writing, before the richly sonorous ending. The vigorous finale began strong and direct, its busy rhythms played with vivid intensity. Constantly changing yet always moving onwards and ending with vivid energy.

Alberga's Symphony No. 2 is a vivid and inventive piece, full of engaging rhythms and vigorous textures. The performance from the conductor-less Academy was terrific and throughout the music had a great sense of presence as well as commitment.

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Elsewhere on this blog

Elaborate vocal lines, aching beauty & expressive pain: The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby in I Voci Segreti - concert review
Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE" - guest article
The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week - concert review
Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
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Elaborate vocal lines, aching beauty & expressive pain: The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby in I Voci Segreti

2026-04-10T11:38:00.006+01:00

The Portrait Players (Emilia Agajew, Kristiina Watt, Claire Ward, Mirim Nohl) with Dame Emma Kirkby

I Voci Segreti: Monteverdi, Luzzaschi, Quagliati, Piccinini, Ortiz, Malvezzi, Coma, Settimia Caccini, Marenzio, Francesca Caccini; The Portrait Players, Dame Emma Kirkby; City Music Foundation at Bart's Great Hall
Reviewed 8 April 2025

The seductive sweetness of three voices weaving in and around each other: Dame Emma Kirkby joins the young ensemble, The Portrait Players, for a programme celebrating the concerto delle donne and the fondness for all-female vocal ensembles in 16th century Italy

The court of the d'Este family, the Dukes of Ferrara in the 16th century is in many ways tantalising. Some of this is caused by distance, how can we know anything about life over 500 years ago. But in the case of the Dukes of Ferrara, when Alfonso II d'Este died without a direct heir in 1597 the d'Este family's hold on the dukedom withered and in 1598 it became papal fief and archives from the period were catastrophically lost.

Ferrara in 16th century matters, because it was a musical hothouse. Alfonso II created the concerto delle donne, a consort of professional female singers that existed from 1580 to 1597, famed for the singers' technical and artistic virtuosity. The women were upper class but not necessarily noble and the music performed was highly private, part of Alfonso's musica secreta concerts.

A highly trained ensemble, one of their innovations was to move from a single voice singing diminutions over accompaniment to two or three highly ornamented voices singing varying diminutions at once, with the ornaments notated in detail by the composers. The concerto delle donne was directed by court composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi and his surviving music for the group is precious.

This idea of a private ensemble of female singers was influential in Italy at the period and a recent concert by The Portrait Players, as part of the City Music Foundation's (CMF) lunchtime recital series in the Great Hall at St Bart's Hospital, explored this repertoire by focusing on the concerto delle donne in Ferrara and the music created for and by the Caccini sisters in Florence.

On Wednesday 8 April 2026, The Portrait Players (Claire Ward, soprano, Kristiina Watt, theorbo/voice, Miriam Nohl, cello and Emilia Agajew, harp) were joined by soprano Dame Emma Kirkby whose familiarity with this repertoire goes back many decades. Alongside madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Annibale Come, Settimia Caccini, Francesca Caccini and Luca Marenzio we heard instrumental music by Paolo Quagliati, Alessandro Piccinini, Diego Ortiz and Cristofano Malvezzi. Claire Ward was a CMF Artist from 2022 to 2024 and founded The Portrait Players in 2023.

Ferrara and its castle, home of the concerto delle donne

In fact, the members of the concerto delle donne in Ferrara all played instruments too, including the lute and harp. For this concert Kristiina Watt both sang and played theorbo, sometimes simultaneously, with Miriam Nohl and Emilia Agajew providing the other instrumental support.

We began with Monteverdi, his O come è gran martire from the Third Book of Madrigals, which dates from the beginning of Monteverdi's years of service in Mantua. Here we had three voices (Claire Ward, Kristiina Watt, and Emma Kirkby) creating a magical sound, clear, dramatic and wonderfully interested in the words and their meaning.

We then moved to Ferrara, a distance of some 50 miles, for the first of Luzzaschi's madrigals, Aura Soave from his collection 12 Madrigali per Cantare e Sonare. For solo voice (Ward), it was an intimate piece with a sober sense of melancholy alongside poetic words. Here, and elsewhere in this concert, the rapid cascades of ornamental notes were shaped beautifully within the musical line. You could understand why, when sung in a tiny chamber, this music astonished. Dame Emma Kirkby talked about visiting Ferrara with The Consort of Musicke and seeing the remarkably small room where the concerto delle donne performed for the duke.

Next came an arrangement of an organ piece by Paolo Quagliati, Toccata ottava tono played by Nohl and Agajew, the arrangement giving a nice sense of the two duetting. Here again you noticed a fondness for cascades of notes.

We returned to Luzzaschi's madrigal collection for I mi son giovinetta, two voices this time (Ward and Watt) duetting in elaborate roulades but giving us an engaging sense of the dance. Alessandro Piccinini was a lutenist in Ferrara and Watt played his Toccata IV from Intavolature di liuto et di chitarrone. She explained that the theorbo was a relatively new instrument at the time, but we know that they were in Ferrara by the late 16th century. The sound was intimate with a gentle melancholy. The flurries of notes presented rhapsodically, rather than as a dance.

Strai pungente d'amore was another of Luzzaschi's madrigals, again a duet with Ward and Watt mixing elaborate lines, aching beauty and expressive pain. Diego Ortiz was Spanish, but he wrote the first manual on how to put division (sequences of rapid notes) on a theme. We heard his divisions on the popular tune Doulce Memoire played by Watt, Nohl and Agajew, though in this acoustic the cello slightly dominated the ensemble. For the final Luzzaschi madrigal in the programme, O dolcezz amarissime d'amore, Kirkby again joined Watt and Ward to create the seductive sweetness of three voices weaving in and around each other.

We then moved to Florence (some 100 miles from Ferrara). Cristofano Malvezzi wrote a significant amount of music for the Intermedi which featured at the 1589 royal wedding in Florence and which were so significant in the development of the operatic form. We heard and arrangement of his organ piece, Canzona played by Watt and Agajew. This had a formal feel to it, but with enlivening passing notes.

Annibale Coma was based in Mantua, and his Cantavan tre leggiadre pastorelle from Novelli Ardori featured three voices (Ward, Watt and Kirkby) singing about three seductive shepherdesses. This was highly intimate music, with Coma making lovely use of imitation in the three voice lines. Again, the singers brought out the words, and of course at this period the poetic texts were important too.

The Portrait Players & Dame Emma Kirkby at St Bart's Great Hall

The Florentine sisters, Francesca and Settimia Caccini would sing in an ensemble with their mother, directed by their father the composer Giulio Caccini (responsible for music in those 1589 Intermedi and composer of some of the earliest operas). There was also an ensemble, le donne di Giulio Romano which featured them alongside his (female) pupils. Settimia was the younger sister. Her madrigal Due luci ridenti had elaborate roulades all in the context of a dance piece. The result was attractively melodic and catchy in a way that Luzzaschi's madrigals are not. We returned to the 1589 Intermedi for Luca Marenzio's Sinfonia and Belle ne fa natura which gave us an engaging instrumental introduction then a lovely trio of voices with harp accompaniment, again with the seductive use of imitation. We then returned to the Caccini sisters for Francesca's O Vive rose from her Primo Libro delle Musiche. This was a solo piece sung by Ward, attractively dancey and catchy.

We ended with Monteverdi again in Mantua. A trio, Lumi miei, cari lumi from the Third Book of Madrigals. Urgent and very present, with an expressive use of the flurries of notes in each part.

There was an encore. A piece, again for three voices, from Francesca Caccini's opera La liberazione di Ruggiero. The oldest surviving opera by a woman (and Francesca Caccini's only surviving opera); it was written for the Medici court in Florence.

Dame Emma Kirkby has been associated with this music for much of her career. She has been coaching the ensemble as well as singing with them, and they are repeating the programme in Cambridge in June, see their website for details.

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE" - guest article
The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week - concert review
Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
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1976 and All That! Spitalfields Music Festival celebrates 50 years since its founding with contemporary music, classical repertoire and cross-artform collaborations including 20 premieres

2026-04-08T09:55:00.000+01:00

The 2026 edition of the Spitalfields Music Festival begins the celebrations of the Festival's 50th anniversary. Established in 1976 by conductor Richard Hickox, this year marks the beginning of Spitalfields Music’s 50th anniversary celebrations which will culminate in 2027 with the anniversary of the first Festival. The 2026 festival takes place from 26 June to 8 July in venues across East London, featuring cutting edge contemporary music, classical repertoire and cross-artform collaborations including 20 premieres.

In line with the festival's cross-artform themes, spoken word takes a prominent role. The opening concert features four newly commissioned poems on theme of what does peace look like, alongside a new work by Philip Herbert inspired by a quote from UN Secretary António Guterres: “Peace is the missing piece” performed by the City of London Sinfonia with music by George Walker, Reena Esmail, Arvo Pärt, and Sibelius. Then writer Ali Smith joins forces with the New European Ensemble to present the UK premieres of four new musical works based on her Seasonal Quartet novels - Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, interspersed with readings from the books that inspired them.

Broadcaster and writer Gillian Moore CBE is joined by Stephen Colegrave and Dennis Bovell MBE to delve into what made 1976, the year that Spitalfields Music was founded, such a defining year - The Great Heatwave; an economic crisis; the death of Benjamin Britten; the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK.

Still on the theme of political engagement, for No man is an island soprano Mimi Doulton and Jonathan Higgins, electronics perform three new commissions by composers Elaine Mitchener, Linda Buckley and Krõõt-Kärt Kaev which reflect on what it means to be European today, ten years on from the referendum that sparked the UK’s decision to depart from the European Union. Whilst performer-composers Emily Levy and Matthew Bourne present a powerful reimagining of British folk music inspired by Julia Varley - a pioneering British activist, trade unionist, suffragette, and social reformer.

Standard Issue make their festival debut with a programme of contemporary music from female-identifying music creators, featuring the world premiere of a new piece by Australian composer and ecologist Kate Milligan which blends music and field recordings to explore the hidden world of London’s wildlife along the Islington canal. [I recently chatted to Standard Issue, see my article]. Trombone quartet Slide Action presents a concert that places the trombone in a completely new light featuring world premieres from Rockey Sun Keting, Ben Nobuto, Omri Kochavi, and the winner of the inaugural Henfrey-Spitalfields Prize. [I chatted to Slide Action in 2024 about their mission to create a new voice for the trombone, see my interview]

Carolyn Sampson stars in In the Belly of the Beast, a theatrical reimagining of three works from 18th century French composer Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Cantates Bibliques (Biblical cantatas) placing a contemporary feminist slant on the biblical tales of Adam, Jonah, and Jephthah, sung in translations by Toria Banks. For The Song Sung True, the Carice Singers and George Parris bring together seminal choral works from the 20th and 21st centuries, including a rarely performed masterpiece by Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur and choral music by Luigi Dallapiccola. Along with the London premieres of four new works by fresh talent from the Composers Academy at Cheltenham Music Festival. [I chatted to George Parris at the end of last year, see my interview]

To close this year's edition, the festival returns to the Tower of London for a concert in collaboration with the Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London that explores the historic legacy of music dating back to the 16th Century featuring Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli.

Returning to that 1976 founding of the festival, singer, songwriter and composer Tom Hickox, the son of founder Richard Hickox, returns to Spitalfields Music Festival with a concert featuring New YVC that combines new material with songs and compositions from his previous albums.

And Spitalfields Music isn't just about the festival. Their RAM Schools Tour is a long-standing collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music which brings musicians into classrooms around East London. An ensemble of musicians from the RAM delivers interactive performances during school assemblies, connecting music to PSHE topics, and bringing it to life in an engaging way for our young audiences. Whilst during the festival, 200 children from the Neighbourhood Schools come together to connect and celebrate through song in the Primary Big Sing, including a specially commissioned piece written for the young people by composer Anna Pool.

Full details from the festival's website.

Sofiane Pamart: Cinematic Horizons with "MOVIE"

2026-04-08T08:19:00.001+01:00

Sofiane Pamart

French pianist and composer Sofiane Pamart is redefining modern classical music for a new generation.

Known for blending high fashion, street culture, and virtuosic piano mastery, Pamart has amassed over a billion streams worldwide, earning him the distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

He studied piano and classical music at the Conservatoire de Lille for sixteen years and the Conservatory Gold Medal at the age of 23. He also has a degree in musicology, a master's degree in law, economics, and management, and in business administration. He is known for contributing to the French rap scene, collaborating with seveeral French and Belgian rappers.

With his latest album, MOVIE, he fuses cinematic grandeur with intimate emotional depth, bringing together seventy orchestral musicians and twenty-four choristers from the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

In MOVIE, the human voice emerges as a compositional instrument alongside the piano, with Latin lyrics penned by his long-time manager and collaborator Guillaume Heritier, creating a universal, timeless language. From recording in the historic Rudolfinum in Prague to premiering at Paris’s iconic Opéra Garnier, this album represents a convergence of elegance, intensity, and ambition in Pamart’s ongoing mission to bring classical music to younger audiences without compromise.

We spoke with Sofiane Pamart about the making of MOVIE, the challenges and joys of working with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and his vision for a modern classical music that resonates across generations.

Your new album features a collaboration with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. How did this partnership come about, and what drew you to work with them?

Prague is part of my story. A few years ago, I performed there for the royal Lobkowicz family in the Royal Castle. The city has a sense of both history and cinema –it carries the weight I was looking for with MOVIE. We recorded the final sessions at the Rudolfinum: seventy orchestral musicians, twenty-four choristers. Watching my music come to life in that space was overwhelming. As a composer, I had always dreamed of experiencing that exact moment.

How was the process of recording with the choir? What was your approach to integrating them into your compositions?

The voices of the Prague Philharmonic Choir are crystalline, pure, and full of character. I didn’t want to direct them conventionally. I wanted the choir to be an instrument in its own right, not an ornament. Each voice had to carry its own weight while contributing to something larger. I approach all collaborations this way: I don’t ask the voice to serve the piano; I ask it to exist alongside it, fully, completely.

The lyrics were written by your manager, Guillaume Heritier, and are sung in Latin. Why Latin?

Guillaume and I have been building a creative universe together for years. Latin imposed itself naturally because it belongs to no contemporary territory—it predates borders and styles. It is universal. The piece is a tribute to a friend who is gone, conceived as a requiem.

Working with vocals is relatively new for you. How do you use the human voice as a compositional tool?

Every voice carries a soul. I don’t use the piano merely to support it. The piano and voice stand on equal footing, in dialogue. The voice brings fragility, presence, and character; the piano brings elevation, space, and emotion. Together, they tell a story that neither could tell alone.

You are widely recognized for redefining modern classical music. How do you define it, and does your music fit into that category?

For me, modern classical is alive. It retains the rigor and emotional depth of classical music while embracing contemporary textures and codes. My music belongs in that world, but I never start with a category. I start with a feeling, a vision, a desire to create something strong and lasting. I aim to give classical intensity a new shape, one that belongs to my time and story.

Reaching younger audiences is part of your mission. How do you achieve that?

It’s not about teaching classical music as a lesson. It’s about giving younger listeners access to emotion, depth, and intensity through the piano. If they discover a wider classical world afterward, that’s beautiful. I aim to make classical music feel alive, direct, and powerful. Albums and performances alike should speak immediately, without simplifying the emotion, showing that the piano can be magnetic, physical – even spectacular.

Your album premiere took place at Opéra Garnier. Why this venue?

MOVIE lives in a dialogue between elegance, intensity, and ambition. Garnier naturally represents that. It gave the premiere a ceremonial dimension, almost like an official entry into the world the project was meant for.

Your performances often blur classical and contemporary lines. How do you balance traditional orchestral elements with your cinematic style?

I focus on emotions rather than balance. What does the moment need to feel true? Sometimes that’s a full orchestra, sometimes a solo piano. Cinematic and classical aren’t opposites – they both aim to make you feel what words cannot. I follow that feeling wherever it leads.

Reflecting on this album and your artistic journey, what does MOVIE represent?

MOVIE is where everything converged: piano, voices, orchestra, choir, and cinema – all in the same room. If someone listens and feels less alone, or experiences music as sacred in a fast-moving world, then it has done everything I hoped for.

Sofiane Pamart - MOVIE - 88 Touches Production. Released 17 April 2026, further details

Thomas Elwin & Friends: wonderful music & delectable nibbles from Millie Charrington in aid of MacMillan Cancer at the Voces8 Centre

2026-04-07T09:25:00.004+01:00

Thomas Elwin as Nemorino in Donizetti's The Elixir of Love with Wild Arts in 2023
(Photo: Bonnie Britain)

Tenor Thomas Elwin is hosting a concert in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support. For Thomas Elwin & Friends at the Voces8 Centre, Gresham Street, London EC2V 7BX on Sunday 12 April, Thomas Elwin will be joined by baritone Ross Ramgobin, mezzo sopranos Rachael Lloyd, Victoria Simmonds and Cassandra Manning, bass baritone Rob Byford, soprano Lillian Noble and flautist Cynthia Millinger. Two pianists will accompany, Erika Gundesen and Caroline Tyler who will also perform some of her compositions.

The event is hosted by Thomas Elwin and chef Millie Charrington, who will prepare delectable nibbles to enjoy alongside drinks and the wonderful music. Both Thomas Elwin and Millie Charrington are running the London Marathon on 26 April in aid of MacMillan Cancer support, ALL proceeds from this concert will also go to MacMillan.

We last saw Thomas Elwin as Arturo in Bellini's La Straniera with Chelsea Opera Group [see my review] and his disc le vase brisé was issued on Voces8 Records last year [see my review], whilst back in 2024 we chatted to him about West Green Opera's new season [see my interview]. Millie Charrington is Sous Chef at Chantelle Nicholson's Apricity Restaurant in Mayfair.

Further details and tickets from EventBrite.

The celebrated choral ensemble Tenebrae and the equally celebrated Britten Sinfonia joined forces in a devout concert for Holy Week

2026-04-07T08:38:00.006+01:00

Graham Sutherland: The Crucifixion - St Matthew's Church, Northampton

Edmund Finnis, Allegri, Barber, Victoria, James MacMillan; Tenebrae, Britten Sinfonia, cond: Nigel Short; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 2 April 2026

The Maundy Thursday concert at Snape Maltings comprised a reflective Passiontide programme featuring Allegri’s Miserere, Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and most fittingly James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross

Acting as a curtain-raiser to Tenebrae and Britten Sinfonia's well-conceived Passiontide concert held on Maundy Thursday, the first day of the Holy Triduum of Easter commemorating the institution of the Eucharist, Edmund Finnis' Hymn (an arrangement of the penultimate movement of the composer's String Quartet No.1 Aloysius of 2018) co-commissioned by Alois Lageder and the Aldeburgh Festival in 2023, was so pleasurable to hear in the confines of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall.

Dedicated to the Lageder family, this delightful six-minute work based on Byrd’s setting of the fifth-century hymn Christe, qui lux es et dies (sung at Compline during Lent) found the strings of the Britten Sinfonia bright and alert to Finnis' clear and distinctive writing in a work that offered a prayer for light over darkness which I found inspiring and contemplative to the core.

In fact, the contemplative nature of the concert was greatly enhanced by the continuity of the programme being delivered without applause between items thereby creating a sense of reverence and shared reflection in which the silence seemed as meaningful as the music itself.

Following the Finnis piece, the well-drilled and articulate singers of Tenebrae, under the direction of their founder, Nigel Short, broke forth with Allegri's sublime and mystical work, Miserere (Miserere mei, Deus / Have mercy on me, O God), a renowned 17th-century choral setting of Psalm 51 written for the Tenebrae services of Holy Week.

The text focuses on themes of repentance and a plea for spiritual cleansing therefore a profoundly penitential piece highly characterized by its haunting and ethereal polyphony writing so well-known for its high vocal line stamping the credentials of Allegri on a fine piece of writing.

Officials of the Vatican banned Miserere being performed outside of the Sistine Chapel which fostered a legendary mystique around it which was blown when a 14-year-old boy, namely Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, transcribed the work by ear after witnessing a performance in the Vatican's iconic chapel. In fact, the work was always performed on Good Friday beneath the adorned Sistine ceiling decorated by frescoes by Michelangelo thereby bridging traditional sacred art with contemporary music.

A renowned and deeply melancholic orchestral piece dating from 1936, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, a cornerstone of American classical music and frequently used in times of mourning, perfectly fitted this well-curated programme.

Originating from Barber's String Quartet in B minor, the composer suitably arranged the second movement (Molto adagio) for string orchestra in 1938 at the request of conductor, Arturo Toscanini, who premièred the work - which found favour at the funerals of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein and Princess Grace of Monaco - on a radio presentation.

One of the most recognizable pieces of classical music in the repertoire punctuated by its meditative arch-like structure featuring a single evolving melodic line intertwining through different string sections Adagio was sublimely and richly played by the Britten Sinfonia to mesmerising effect.

Sung to texts from the gospels and from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Tenebrae Responsories of 1585 by Victoria are always lovely to hear especially when performed by Tenebrae. Written for the Tenebrae service of darkness where candles are progressively extinguished to signify the gathering darkness of the Crucifixion, the work's a celebrated and masterful composition of the Spanish Renaissance offering an intense, emotive and concise musical setting of the Passion narrative thus reflecting upon Christ's suffering.

Therefore, it's a core part of the choral repertoire for Holy Week and known for its intense, dramatic and sombre tone reflecting the themes of betrayal, suffering and loss as exemplified in the well-loved movements: O vos omnes and Tenebrae factae sunt.

The second half of the programme was devoted to James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross, a powerful 45-minute cantata for choir and string orchestra commissioned by BBC Television for Holy Week in 1994 performed by Cappella Nova and the BT Scottish Ensemble under Alan Tavener.

The traditional text of the work - known for its high tension, dramatic silences and a lamenting style expressing profound sorrow - is based on a compilation from all four gospels to form a sequential presentation of the last seven sentences uttered by Christ.

From the opening phrase Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do to the closing phrase Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit, voices and strings came together in unison delivering a cherished account of such a dramatic and thought-provoking work.

Dramatically, the words of the final phrase are loudly exclaimed in anguish three times by forceful voices with the strings taken over slowly reducing their volume and tempo simultaneously ending the work in practical silence.

Nigel Short found the right balance between voice and strings thereby offering a fine interpretation of such a meditative, sensitive and serene work that more than punctuates the deep Catholic faith that this well-loved Scottish composer harbours.

As an aside, I heard James MacMillan's latest work Angels Unawares which explores twelve biblical angel encounters advocating compassion and spiritual awareness broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Sunday 29th March from the Sistine Chapel performed by The Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Harry Christophers. The featured soloists were soprano Elizabeth Watts and tenor Matthew McKinney.

The first choral work to receive its world première in the Sistine Chapel, the text comes from poetry written by the late Robert Willis, former Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, who died in 2024. Its UK première falls on Tuesday 2nd June (Elgar's birthday) at Cadogan Hall, London.

Although concerts are rarely staged in the Sistine Chapel, The Sixteen and Britten Sinfonia were there in 2018 premièring James MacMillan's Stabat mater, a 60-minute work and widely recognized as a modern masterpiece. The performance made history, too, as it became the first concert ever to be live streamed from the Sistine Chapel thereby reaching millions of viewers worldwide.

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Elsewhere on this blog

Decadent & modernist: director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic on working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years - interview
Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
Home

Decadent & modernist: I chat to director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic about working on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's first staging of Wagner's Tannhäuser for 30 years

2026-04-04T08:47:00.001+01:00

Wagner: Tannhäuser - designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Later this month, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon will be presenting a new production of Wagner's Tannhäuser, opening on 23 April 2026. The theatre's first staging of the work in nearly thirty years. And the production will feature role debuts for Jonathan Stoughton (Tannhäuser) and Annemarie Kremer (Venus), plus Allison Oakes as Elisabeth. Graham Jenkins conducts and Max Hoehn directs with set designs by Darko Petrovic, costumes by Nuno Velez, choreography by Isabel Galriça and animations by Amber Cooper-Davies. I recently chatted to Max Hoehn and Darko Petrovic to find out more about their plans for the production.

Darko has worked on Tannhäuser before, for a production in Cologne. He was pleased to be returning to the work, finding it fascinating and very romantic. For him, it is still a kind of mystery, and he thinks of Wagner as intending to keep a path of mystery in his work. Darko sees their role as one of trying to solve the hidden meanings that add weight to the narrative. Cologne used the first (Dresden) version of the opera and performances were not it in the theatre so they were able to put the extra musicians all around the auditorium.

Whilst Max has not worked on Tannhäuser before, in 2023 he directed Der fliegende Holländer at the São Carlos in Lisbon also with Graham Jenkins conducting. Max comments on the visceral impact of Wagner's sound world, as if you are entering a cathedral of sound with all those layers. The question for him and Darko is how do you create space and images that let the music breathe. An inherently taxing challenge.

Wagner: Tannhäuser - designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Like many of Wagner's heros, Tannhäuser is very damaged but approachable. With Darko, Max wanted to create a psychological space for the piece focused around Tannhäuser's divided personality. Max is very drawn to the end of the Fin de siècle period and the German Weimar Republic. He and Darko have used the graphic art of the period as the aesthetic for the designs, so the opera becomes part erotic dream and part nightmare. Much of the art of the Weimar Republic, particularly that which the Nazis labelled as Entartete Kunst, has a very nightmarish, surreal quality and Max feels that Wagner's music fits. He and Darko made these decisions early on in the process, before deciding a particular interpretative path.

Max took a similar approach in his production of Der fliegende Holländer in Lisbon, where he brought out the city's links to the sea. With Tannhäuser having not been staged at the theatre for nearly 30 years, there will be those who have never seen a production before. Whereas if he was directing the opera in Germany, where it is familiar, Max would work with parallel metaphors, in Lisbon he wanted to find interesting ways of presenting the key elements of the story. The production will not be completely realistic, but they find ways of representing the drama.

Which means asking questions such as 'What is the Venusberg', 'What is the Wartburg', whilst moving away from the original realistic interpretation. For Max and Darko it is important to consider how to represent these religious aspects of the opera. Max admits that the production in Lisbon will inevitably be different from how he might direct it in Germany, but his overall approach would probably be the same.

Darko points out that if you follow the libretto literally, then you will go wrong. Wagner knew this; he was disappointed with the scenic setup of his works. With the production of the Ring at Bayreuth he felt the results looked so kitsch and evidently could not bear it. An abstract approach works well because Wagner's works were more advanced than the theatrical reality of the time. If you visit King Ludwig's castles (Neuschwanstein has wall paintings by one of the designers from Parsifal), it is clear that Wagner's music was so far ahead of the visual aesthetic of the time. A realistic set is no longer going to work, and Darko feels that it helps the audience if you have an interpretation adapted to Wagner's visionary world.

Wagner: Tannhäuser - animation by Amber Cooper-Davies., courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Max and Darko have worked together before, and they deal a lot in dreams. The music of Tannhäuser makes them feel the uneasiness that pervades the work. Tannhäuser is an outsider who does not fit in anywhere. They feel that it is important to look at the opera differently and not with the eye of televisual realism. Opera nowadays has to offer something else rather than the realism of television.

Tannhäuser is a taxing piece, and two of the singers (Jonathan Stoughton and Annemarie Kremer) are singing their roles for the first time. Max comments that you have to accept that this is sport, the performers need to be high-level athletes as well as singers. So rehearsals must take this into account: you cannot simply rehearse non-stop. Jonathan Stoughton has been performing Wagner in Mannheim, in their The Ring in One Evening, as well as Lohengrin and Parsifal. Annemarie Kremer has performed in Tannhäuser before, singing the role of Elisabeth in the French version of the opera!

In Lisbon, they are performing Wagner's Vienna version of the opera, which was created for the last production that Wagner supervised. [The work premiered in Dresden and Wagner then made some alterations, before creating a new version in French for Paris complete with the Bacchanal in Act One, then this was revised in German for Vienna.]

The Vienna version is close to the Paris version with the full Venusberg music. Max admits that he could not imagine directing the Dresden version as this misses so much of the Venusberg music. In the Lisbon production, their setting for the Venusberg is grounded in the 1920s aesthetic with its graphic art. And Max feels that this brings a sense of the dark period to come in the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, the Venusberg becomes the underworld that gave Berlin its reputation. For the Bacchanal they have dancers and actors, with an animation adding a dream-like quality to the staging, though it opens with just the music.

Wagner: Tannhäuser - animation by Amber Cooper-Davies., courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

In the opera Tannhäuser is accused of committing a terrible crime, and Max wanted to find a way to make this more than a philosophical concept. So that in Max and Darko's Venusberg, Tannhäuser is exploring the gay and bisexual nightlife of the time. This enables the audience to understand Tannhäuser's double life in a very explicit way. Max points to the great heldentenor Max Lorenz who sang the role in the 1930s and 1940s. He had two secret lives as he was gay, and married to a Jewish wife. Yet he survived. And there are various gay figures who take inspiration from Tannhäuser, and Max mentions Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and De Profundis. In this latter, Wilde mentions turning to Christ and the element of salvation in Tannhäuser encouraged Max to make the connection.

There remain questions. What did Wagner imagine as a solution for the designs of the opera? What is the salvation that comes at the end of Tannhäuser? Perhaps Wagner himself did not know. Max admits that the ending of the opera is still a work in progress, however he affirms that there is going to be a miracle and that Tannhäuser will die. Their challenge is to create that!

Both Max and Darko are definitely open to doing further Wagner operas. Darko loves working on Wagner, finding the works ambivalent: the more in depth you go, the more you see how problematic it gets. He describes working on Wagner as taking a deep dive into the world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the consequences. It helps to concentrate on specifics, the time period of the 1920s is a convenient way to interpret his music. Darko admires the composer as a theatre writer, but his works are challenging though Darko admits that they are huge fun too. Max remains unambivalent in my admiration for a work like Tannhäuser. He loves the composer's but there is darkness too. When he staged Der fliegende Holländer it was as a ghost story, a child's nightmare.

Wagner: Tannhäuser - designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

The world nowadays has a short attention span allied to a narrow idea of Wagner based on the political identity he came to be associated with. By setting the work in the late Fin de siècle, Max and Darko want to show that Wagner was like a drug, and he was seen was decadent and modernist.

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Elsewhere on this blog

Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen - review
A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
A colourful & exciting journey: neoclassical composer Julia Thomsen whose music has achieved over 18 million Spotify streams - interview
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Drama & presence: Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Barbican with Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen, Nick Pritchard & Alex Rosen

2026-04-03T08:50:00.001+01:00

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Alex Rosen (Jesus), Nick Pritchard (Evangelist), Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

Bach: St Matthew Passion; Nick Pritchard, Alex Rosen, Carolyn Sampson, Hugh Cutting, Hugo Hymas, Thomas Bauer, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Barbican Centre
1 April 2026

Great presence and a sense of drama, this was Bach's great passion as communal expressive enterprise with intent performances from all crowned by fine solo singing and choral contributions, with Nick Pritchard's profoundly moving Evangelist at the centre.

Much ink has been spilt over the forces that Bach used to perform his St Matthew Passion. Undoubtedly it was a stretch, his family did not call it the great passion for nothing. Yet it was given four or five times at Leipzig. We will probably never know exactly what forces were used, we lack the sort of detailed evidence we have for Messiah performances that Handel gave at the Foundling Hospital.

The St Matthew Passion works very well when using just eight singers, covering all the solo roles and the choruses. This creates a sense of intimacy, and the various arias with chorale are transformed into fascinating ensembles. Yet, this approach is taxing and does not represent the entirety of the work. Also, it is worth bearing in mind that Bach was aware of the musical world around him, of the courts in Dresden and in Berlin. Even when struggling to perform the St Matthew Passion with minimal forces in Leipzig he might have imagined how the work would sound in the unlikely setting of the (Roman Catholic) court chapel in Dresden, for instance.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Hugh Cutting, Carolyn Sampson, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo are performing Bach's St Matthew Passion on a tour (Spain, London, Netherlands, Germany) and presented the work at the Barbican on 1 April 2026, with Nick Pritchard as the Evangelist, Alex Rosen as Jesus, plus soloists Carolyn Sampson, Hugh Cutting, Hugo Hymas and Thomas Bauer. The forces used included two choirs of 17 singers each (mixed men and women altos), and two orchestras of around 18 each, with all the smaller solos being drawn from the choir.

It was very much a 'traditional' version, in the sense of the tradition that has developed in the 20th century, yet Cohen has a fine ear and even in the opening chorus, the choir did not over-dominate. This was never a choral society version, and throughout it was clear that Cohen had thought everything through rather than following tradition blindly. One final detail that I enjoyed, after the last recitative sung by all four soloists they remained on stage and sang in the final chorus, making it truly a communal summation.

The opening chorus began quietly as Cohen slowly built the sound in a gradual unfolding. The result was powerful but not over-emphatic and the rich tapestry of detail - orchestral and choral - was fully apparent with a great spring to the rhythms. Only towards the end, as the movement drew to a climax, did the choral sound dominate.

Throughout chorus and orchestra had great presence, and Cohen kept the drama flowing without any awkward pauses to that this was a drama that moved.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Carolyn Sampson, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

Nick Pritchard sang the Evangelist from memory, as he did in the recent St John Passion with the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Peter Whelan [see my review]. Pritchard's sound easily filled the hall, not over loud but commanding with clarity to the words. As ever, with Pritchard, there was the sense that the words matter, that he wanted to convey to us the full meaning. This meant that the Evangelist's recitative was full of vocal colour and individual inflections which brought out the detailed emotions that Pritchard's Evangelist was feeling. There were moments of great intimacy, when the meaning was paramount, but also moments of vivid viciousness. At Jesus's arrest, Pritchard's cascades of notes brought a real sense of drama to the narrative.

As Jesus, the American bass Alex Rosen had a wonderfully resonant dark-toned voice with a meaty bite to it. His delivery was often firm, and in the more dramatic scenes he could be trenchant, but with a great use of vocal colours, and at the right moment he brought out a lovely lyricism too. Throughout, whether interacting with the Disciples, or with the High Priest or with Pilate, there was a sense that this Jesus was to a certain extent withdrawn from the drama. He was what he was, Rosen managed to bringing out the self-knowledge in the role with a commitment that might be trenchant or even truculent, but always used his resonant dark tones. The ending, just one single line in this reading of the Passion, was intense, vibrant and devastating.

In all her arias, you felt as if Carolyn Sampson was embodying the character singing them. Without and staging she seemed to bring them alive. In 'Blute nur' her tragic mien rather intensified the feeling alongside her fine tone. 'Wiewohl mein Herz' featured wonderfully characterful oboes and bassoon, then 'Ich will dir mein Herze schenken' had a real sense of joy to it and sprung rhythms.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Patrick Keefe (Pilate), Eleanor Garside (Pilate's Wife), Alex Rosen (Jesus), Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

In Part Two, after a restrained recitative 'Er hat uns allen wohlgetan', Carolyn Sampson sang 'Aus Liebe' on a thread of voice interweaving with the fine flute solo to create a little bit of magic. And we got a strong sense of contrast as it was immediately followed by Pritchard's tortured recit 'Sie schreien aber noch mehr'.

Hugh Cutting began as he meant to go on and sang 'Du lieber Heiland' with great meaning. His beauty of tone was allied to a sense of musical line, the way he spun long notes and shaded off phrases. 'Buss' und Reu' was almost a dance, yet with strong rhythms and bitter words. He was singing to us, in all his arias it felt as if Cutting invested them with an urgency to communicate.

At the end of Part One, Sampson and Cutting joined together for the glorious duet, 'So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen', the two contrasting voices both rather intimate yet weaving together and paired with strong woodwind and spitting chorus.

Cutting opened Part Two with 'Ach nun is mein Jesus hin!' where the initial long note was floated magically, yet he developed the piece with vehement intensity. 'Erbarme dich' was everything one could have wished for, the long breathed, beautifully shaped lines and finely spun long notes. Plus a sense of meaning, with a lightness to the overall accompanying rhythms and terrific violin solo. Cutting's strong account of 'Erbarme es Gott!' led to a lovely intimate account of 'Können Tränen meiner Wangen' with his familiar care over the phrasing. 'Ach, Golgotha' was intense, leading to an urgent account of 'Sehet! Sehet!' with finely characterful wind solos and whilst he despatched the more bravura passages with clear enjoyment.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Hugo Herman-Wilson (Judas), Nick Pritchard (Evangelist), Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

Hugo Hymas's recitative with chorus, 'O Schmerz' pitted him against the wonderful colours of the wind but he gave the music an intensity and real sense of drama. By contrast, the chorus was gently blended, contrasting with Hymas's intensity. In the aria, 'Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen' he was paired with a perky oboe. Here Hymas still had an edge to the tone, but made the whole rather touching.

In Part Two, Hymas's first recitative, with its fabulous wind accompaniment, was steady yet with an intensity that continued into the aria, 'Geduld, Geduld' which Hymas sang with plangent tone.

For his first recitative, Thomas Bauer made the words count and the music was very marked. In his aria, 'Gerne will ich mich bequemen' though he was characterful, as the music moved along swiftly you felt he did not always project to the rear of the hall. In Part Two, 'Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder' was taken at quite a lick with a fine violin solo. Bauer really spat the words out, displaying great commitment if perhaps not ideal accuracy. Whilst its preceding recitative was expressive, Bauer sounded over careful in 'Komm, süsses Kreuz' and perhaps even effortful. In his final recitative Bauer showed great care with the words, though perhaps 'Mache dich, mein Herze, rein' was rather over emphatic, but we did have the wondrous oboe da caccia solo to enjoy along with a strong orchestral contribution.

The final recitative sung by all four soloists was profoundly moving and lead finely into the last chorus.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen at Barbican Hall (Photo: Ed Maitland Smith)

The other solo parts, all standing out from the choir, were well taken and having the individual soloists move into a central position between the choirs provided a fine element of drama. Hugo Herman-Wilson was a strong Judas, vivid at first but almost touching in his interaction with Jesus. Patrick Keefe (one of the current crop of ENO Harewood Artists) was Pilate, singing with strong, dark tone and making the character trenchant and uncompromising, Alexander Bower-Brown was a dark-toned decisive Peter, with Eleanor Garside as a strong Pilate's wife, Daisy Walford and Daisy Livesey as Maids, Stephanie Frankline and Jeremy Budd as False Witnesses, and Adam Green and Thomas Humphreys as High Priests.

The orchestral contribution was equal to that of the soloists and choir, this was very much a communal enterprise, vividly present and expressive. The individual solos were all impressive, but it was also the smaller moments that counted too, with fine support from the continuo team.

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session - record review
Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
A colourful & exciting journey: neoclassical composer Julia Thomsen whose music has achieved over 18 million Spotify streams - interview
Intoxicating textures to offset Lenten penitence: Mother of Mercy - Music for Lent from Harry Christophers & The Sixteen - concert review
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A sonic extravaganza: Alex Paxton's Candyfolk Spacedrum demonstrates his gift for carefully crafted music that has the energy & engagement of a communal jam session.

2026-04-02T07:40:00.002+01:00

Alex Paxton: Candyfolk Spacedrum: Alex Paxton, Jennifer Walshe, Riot Ensemble, Dreammusics Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Belham Primary School, David Ingamells, Jennifer Walshe; Jonah Records
Reviewed 25 March 2026

A sonic extravaganza where Paxton demonstrates not only his remarkable ear for creating richly layered textures where sophisticated hyperactivity dominates, but also a gift for carefully crafted music that has all the energy and engagement of a communal jam session.

Candyfolk Spacedrum is the latest aural extravaganza from composer Alex Paxton. The album, on Jonah Records, features performances from Riot Ensemble, Dreammusics Ensemble, and London Sinfonietta with pieces originally commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Riot Ensemble and Zubin Kanga.

First comes Blue Chew Cheerio Earpiece, eight hyperactive movements performed by Riot Ensemble. Things begin in bright, light, 1950s, hyperactive fashion. Paxton continues this vein, varying the material but always multi-layering wildly different lines, including lurching changes of direction. Inspired by sample culture, cartoons and the fragmented listening experience of the internet and 90’s pirate radio adverts, the music channels dance music energy. Something that Paxton does brilliantly well. Despite sounding sampled, the music is fully written out as Paxton likes to keep the decision-making to himself. But there are pause points in the hyperactivity, so that YOUR MOM Still Laughing features moments that are slowed down, dreamy and almost spaced out.

Pullback Hat Biome Dunk features vocalist Jennifer Walshe and Paxton's trombone improvising with Dreammusics Orchestra. Here, the orchestral part is entirely notated and just the solo parts are improvised. There is something orgasmic about the textures that Paxton conjures with his vibrant trombone over an already rich mix of layers, and only gradually does Walshe appear and begin to dominate in a disturbing fashion.

Alex Paxton: Candyfolk Space Drum - children of Belham Primary School (Photo: Orlando Gili)

Candyfolk Spacedrum is an 11 movement work played by London Sinfonietta with children from Belham Primary School, with solos mixed in from Paxton himself (on trombone) and David Ingamells (jazz drummer). Things begin with a fart followed by textures that combine hyperactivity with spareness. But gradually you realise that there is a larger scale complexity of ideas going on. The second movement, Magic Science could be relatively straight-forward, but it foregrounds the children's choir where there is no attempt to aim at perfection. This is simply a group of children singing, creating a community enterprise, though Paxton's community includes all manner of individuals including his own virtuosic trombone. The more hyperactive moments are psychedelic indeed, despite foregrounding the children!

I have no idea what the children thought of the music. As you can see from the photos, they were indeed in the studio with everyone else. And I suspect that they loved it. For all the sophistication of Paxton's music, there is still within it a sort-of childish glee, a love of creating sounds for their own sake.

The final work on the disc, Carpig is the only fully electronic work. Here Paxton is writing for Zubin Kanga and his array of synthesizers. Again, Paxton uses the sounds and multi-layering capabilities to make a hyperactive soundscape appear.

Alex Paxton: Candyfolk Space Drum - London Sinfonietta, children of Belham Primary School, Aga Serugo-Lugo (Photo: Orlando Gili)

One of the fascinating things about these pieces is that though we know Paxton is a superb improviser, and he does indeed write for other improvisers, the overall textures and timbres are carefully thought through. These are random collages where every little pinpoint of sound is predecided, yet overall it has such a superb energy and hyperactive effervescence that the feel is a group of musicians jamming over a groove. And having a great time doing so.

Alex Paxton: Candyfolk Space Drum

1-8 Blue Chew Cheerio Earpiece
Riot Ensemble & Dreammusics Ensemble

9 - Pull Back Biome Dunk
Dreammusics Symphony Orchestra with improvising soloists Alex Paxton and Jennifer Walsh

Tracks 10 - 20 - Candyfolk Space Drum
Alex Paxton, London Sinfonietta, Children’s Chorus of The Belham Primary school conducted by Aga Serugo-Lugo

21 - Car-Pig
Alex Paxton, Zubin Kanga

Jonah Records

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Elsewhere on this blog

Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight - opera review
Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
A colourful & exciting journey: neoclassical composer Julia Thomsen whose music has achieved over 18 million Spotify streams - interview
Intoxicating textures to offset Lenten penitence: Mother of Mercy - Music for Lent from Harry Christophers & The Sixteen - concert review
Letter from Florida: Robert J Carreras experiences Peter Lieberson's 'vehicle through which to reflect a different face in love’s mirror' - concert review
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Act Four: Young Artists from the National Opera Studio on terrific form in scenes directed by Ruth Knight

2026-04-01T10:43:00.010+01:00

Donizetti: La fille du regiment - Young Artists of the National Opera Studio (Photo: Kirsten McTernan )

Act Four: Rossini, Lortzing, Stravinsky, Britten, Berlioz, Cilea, Donizetti; Young Artists of the National Opera Studio, director: Ruth Knight, conductor: Andrew Griffiths; Bishopsgate Institute
Reviewed 31 March 2026

Director Ruth Knight and the Young Artists weave together a selection of scenes, well-known and lesser known, into an engaging tale of love and relationships, forming a terrific showcase

For the past year the current intake at the National Opera Studio have been working with the various national opera companies. The final of these collaborative events took place on Sunday at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff after a week of work with Welsh National Opera under director Ruth Knight. The resulting show, aptly named Act Four, was brought to London on Tuesday 31 March 2026 at the Bishopsgate Institute. Directed by Ruth Knight, the ten Young Artists of the National Opera Studio - sopranos Elisabeth Eunsoo Lee, Rachel McLean, Biqing Zhang, mezzo-sopranos Mathilda Goike, Lil Mo Browne, Clover Kayne, tenor Tomos Owen Jones, baritone Ambrose Connolly, bass-baritone Jack Sandison, bass Peter Lidbetter - performed a range of operatic excerpts by Rossini, Lortzing, Stravinsky, Britten, Berlioz, Cilea, and Donizetti, accompanied by répétiteurs André Bertoncini, Henry Reavey and Alfonso Sanchez Pérez and conducted by Andrew Griffiths.

Ruth Knight's production took place in and around a Tudor wedding (the men in modern suits but with ruffs), the long table forming a backdrop for various scenes between the wedding guests where love and relationships were put under the spotlight. This meant that guests overheard and eavesdropped, even participated in the scenes as the drama flowed freely, losing a sense of operatic scenes and weaving into a drama. One point about the selection of music, the cast included only one (hard-working) tenor, Tomos Owen Jones, so not every scene featured a conventional operatic hero and some were at an interesting tangent.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Sivigla - Tomos Owen Jones, Ambrose Connolly - Young Artists of the National Opera Studio (Photo: Kirsten McTernan )

We began with the duet 'All'idea di quel metallo' from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with Jones and Connolly as the Count and Figaro. The two had an engaging presence allied to impressive technical ability which made the opener a delight. The next duet featured the bride and her older guardian/husband with a duet from Lortzing's Der Wildschütz performed by Lee and Lidbetter. She was a serious heroine but with real charm whilst he brought characterful swagger to the role of jealous older lover.

Stravinsky's The Rakes Progress is more familiar, and we got the scene were Nick Shadow persuades Tom Rakewell to consider marrying Baba. Sandison made a winning Nick Shadow, engaging and rather seductive, paired aptly with Jones's vivid Tom. Lidbetter returned with Browne for Anna and Narbal's duet from Berlioz's Les Troyens, the two both impressing with their French diction, whilst Lidbetter brought a very different, very French timbre to his voice here. So his dark, serious tones contrasted with Browne's ample warmth and sense of drama. Perhaps the volume was too much for the space, but it was definitely taking Berlioz and running with him in an impressive and idiomatic manner.

The quarrel quartet from Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream was equally vivid as the four singers, McLean, Goike, Jones and Connolly brought a real sense of operatic drama to the piece, leaving the polite English pastoral well behind. This was Britten that was vividly theatrical and highly coloured. The first half ended with more Rossini, this time from Mose in Egitto. The duettino for Anaide (Zhang) and Maria (Kayne ) where Anaide admits her secret love to her maid. Zhang was touching and plangent as the heroine with Kayne wonderfully supportive.

Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Rachel McLean, Mthilda Goike, Tomos Owen Jones, Ambrose Connolly - Young Artists of the National Opera Studio (Photo: Kirsten McTernan )

Part two opened with a piece of strong meat, the end of Act Two from Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur. This is where our heroine, Adriana (McLean) is forced to help her rival, the Principessa (Browne) even though the two do no know who each other is. The scene is dramatically risible, though Knight and her performers rose to the challenge, but what lifted it was the vivid drama from the two singers with Browne's powerful thrilling Principessa facing off against McLean's dramatic and rather touching Adriana. Over the top? Yes, but terrific.

Things were a little more subdued and arguably more sophisticated in the trio from Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict, where Hero (Lee) and Ursule (Goike) prepare for Hero's wedding and try to persuade Beatrice (Kayne) that she too wants to marry. The result moved between moments of beauty and highly characterful interactions. Kayne made a terrific Beatrice, and the concluding trio was magical. We ended with something of a showpiece, from Donizetti's La fille du regiment; no, not that showpiece but the duet for Marie (Zhang) and Sulpice (Sandison). Here Zhang made Marie full of charm and character, and she certainly has all the notes, whilst Sandison swaggered engagingly, and at the end the other soloists wandered in and formed the final chorus.

Lortzing: Der Wildschutz - Elisabeth Eunsoo Lee, Peter Lidbetter - Young Artists of the National Opera Studio (Photo: Kirsten McTernan )

The singers' year is nearly over and their final event is on 19 May 2026 at Wigmore Hall when they will be giving a lunchtime recital.

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs - record review
Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
A colourful & exciting journey: neoclassical composer Julia Thomsen whose music has achieved over 18 million Spotify streams - interview
Intoxicating textures to offset Lenten penitence: Mother of Mercy - Music for Lent from Harry Christophers & The Sixteen - concert review
Letter from Florida: Robert J Carreras experiences Peter Lieberson's 'vehicle through which to reflect a different face in love’s mirror' - concert review
Seductive & expressive: in Time Stands Still, tenor Kieran White & lutenist Cédric Meyer refocus the sound world of Dowland & Danyel - cd review
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Shakespeare in Music? “Give me excess of it”. There is no sickening and the appetite never dies.

2026-04-01T07:42:00.001+01:00

Devon Glover

"If music be the food of love" then take me to the Shakespeare in Music Festival (SIM) in Stratford-upon-Avon from 20 to 23 April. The SIM Festival is rapidly becoming the "go to" Festival for those who love music and love Shakespeare.

SIM’s first Festival - in May last year - was greeted by a local critic in the Stratford Herald as the best thing that had happened to classical music in the town during the sixteen years that he had been living there. Audiences were treated to a feast of song by artists at the height of their profession, among them David Padmore and Elizabeth Kenny, and others straight from training at the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, all delighted at the opportunity of singing and playing at the inaugural session of the Festival.

This year the Festival offers a rich selection of fifteen events over the four days – from 20 to 23 April (Shakespeare’s Birthday). Each morning and each afternoon there is a musical recital. There are songs Ancient and Modern from the harp and viola duo the Painted Fall, madrigals from the Arcadian Singers, songs by Castelnuovo Tedesco, Kenneth Leighton and Erich Korngold sung baritone William Drakett accompanied on piano by Simon Carrey, and Elizabethan and Jacobean music by the Bloomsbury Baroque Ensemble. The Festival also features the young countertenor Benjamin Irvine-Capel accompanied on the lute by Kristiina Watt, and Sami Brown and Daniel Thomson of Dowland’s Foundry with an Elizabethan meditation on Facets of Time.

Each lunchtime an illustrated lecture fills in the background of Shakespeare’s music in his plays, of his time, and from four hundred years of musical legacy that lead from his age to the present day. One concentrates this year on Shakespeare’s drinking songs, another on the Walton score for Laurence Olivier’s patriotic 1940 take on Henry V, and another, by Devon Glover, the Sonnet Man from New York, will open the audience’s ears and minds to Shakespeare and Rap.

Dowland's Foundry

Evening performances take place in the atmospheric setting of Holy Trinity, Shakespeare’s memorial Church. A double bill on the first night offers a concert performance of George Bernard Shaw’s 1910 one-act play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets followed by Philip Hagemann’s 2008 short opera of the same name, inspired by the play but with a twist in the tail. The talented Stratford Chamber Choir then offer Vaughan Williams’ four unaccompanied songs as well as George Shearing’s settings of Shakespeare songs, alongside soloists from Rose Opera with enchanting interpretations of folk and courtly verses of Shakespeare’s time. And the Rose Opera singers will enchant the audience on the final night with their selection of favourite arias from Shakespeare’s operatic legacy, from Berlioz and Bellini, Gounod and Thomas, Britten and Tippett, Verdi and Wagner – yes, from his very first opera which was based on Love’s Labour’s Lost!

In addition to all that, the Festival has been chosen for the first award of the Fischer Fund Prize for the best Shakespeare song composed in 2025. It is shared this year between a sonnet and a speech, interpreted by Mathilda Goika (mezzo) and Archie Inns (tenor) with Nigel Foster, the founder of the London Song Festival, at the piano, for a musical celebration of Shakespeare’s Birthday.

Performances in this Festival of Shakespeare and his musical legacy take place in Holy Trinity Church, the 13th century Guild Chapel, and the United Reformed Church, all central locations in Stratford-on-Avon. Just check out the programme on the website and book on-line.

Shakespeare in Music? "Give me excess of it". There is no sickening and the appetite never dies.

Grimeborn Festival 2026: where daring stories, urgent questions and bold reinventions unfold across intimate stages

2026-03-31T10:07:00.002+01:00

Mozart: Don Giovanni - Ensemble OrQuesta at 2025 Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre (Photo: Julian Guidera)

The Grimeborn Festival is back at the Arcola Theatre this summer from 15 July to 5 September with its usual daring mix of new work and classics reinvented. Three double bills and the UK premiere of a new opera by Tuluğ Tırpan ensure that 20th century and contemporary repertoire is well represented, and then there are stripped-down interpretations of classics by Purcell, Handel and Mozart.

A double bill opens the festival with two chamber operas focusing on the climate crisis. Eden 2.0 from librettist Alexia Peniguel and composer William Gardner takes the Garden of Eden as the starting point to ask what if creation could be rebooted, but this time the tree of knowledge was sanctioned and freely accessible? Then Lisa Logan's After my Breath is a chamber opera for solo soprano, drawn from moments in the life of climate activist Greta Thunberg.

There are two further double bills. That from The Opera Makers features farcical murder mysteries by twentieth century composers Madeleine Dring and Ned Rorem. Dring's The Cupboard is a whodunnit for three voices, whilst Rorem's Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters is a surreal philosophical musing on childhood innocence based on Gertrude Stein. Tearworks Productions pair Schoenberg's intense monodrama Erwartung with Kevin Rodgers’ The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K, first premiered in 2025, which explores violence and sanity in a two-act electroacoustic chamber work for four singers.

Turkish composer Tuluğ Tırpan's docu-opera Lowest of the Low is based on the undercover experience of German investigative journalist Günter Wallraf who was disguised as a Turkish migrant worker in West Germany during the 1980. Arcola Theatre and Yeni Opera's production is the work's UK premiere, directed by Mehmet Ergen.

Ololyga presents a new work by Florence Carruthers Andrews based on Hildegard of Bingen's morality play Ordo Virtutum. Bitter Visions: By Order of Hildegard is a reimagining of Hildegard's work that offers an immersive, meditative experience that fuses medieval plainchant with ambient electronic soundscapes.

Having explored Mozart at previous festivals, Ensemble OrQuesta turns to Purcell with Dido and Aeneas directed by Marcio da Silva (who also sings Aeneas) and with Helen May and Rosemary Carlton Willis alternating Dido and the Sorceress. The company also continues its Mozart journey with a new production of The Magic Flute directed by Marcio da Silva (who also sings Monostatos) blending inventive physical theatre and starkly poetic imagery. Mozart features in Barefoot Opera's stripped-down production of Cosi fan tutte, directed by Jenny Miller,

Handel's first opera for London, Rinaldo features in a new staging by Ralph Bridle that 'looks beyond the myth to the darker realities beneath the fantasy: captivity, enslavement and the human cost of war.'. Then one of Handel's greatest hits, Giulo Cesare, with New Trinity Baroque conducted by Pedrag Gosta featuring Sandro Rossi as Giulio Cesare and Radoslava Vorgić as Cleopatra.

Full details from the Arcola Theatre's website.

Warm hearted & with a twinkle in his eye: The Brook Street Band bring out the sense of enjoyment in the violin sonatas of Ipswich-based Joseph Gibbs

2026-03-31T07:50:00.000+01:00

Joseph Gibbs: 8 Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 1; The Brook Street Band; First Hand Records

Warm and characterful music that deserves to be better known. Provincial in fact but not in reputation, the music of Joseph Gibbs endears itself in these lovely performances.

Until the mid-20th century, Ipswich-based composer Joseph Gibbs's biggest claim to fame was probably that in 1755 Thomas Gainsborough painted his portrait. And arguably, it is the existence of this portrait which raised interest in Gibbs's music. The Brook Street Band has been playing, enjoying and loving Joseph Gibbs's violin sonatas for almost as long as the ensemble has been in existence, approaching 30 years now. They have finally brought them to the recording studio in what is clearly a passion project.

The Brook Street Band (Rachel Harris, Tatty Theo, Carolyn Gibley) perform Joseph Gibbs's 8 Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 1 on First Hand Records. The first complete recording of the works.

So, who was Joseph Gibbs? Well, simply, not a lot is known about him. Aside from a few organ pieces, we know of only two sets of music, the c. 1746 Eight Solos for a Violin with a Thorough Bass, Op. 1 and a set of Six Quartettos for Two Violins, Tenor and Violoncello or Harpsichord, Op. 2 from 1777. Both were published by subscription, and included notable musical names of the times indicating Gibbs’s recognition and popularity extended far beyond East Anglia, even though we have no evidence for Gibbs leaving the area once established in his adult life.

Gibbs was born in Colchester in 1698 where his father was a member of the City Waits, and Gibbs probably received his early musical education from his father. Gibbs may have studied in London, possibly with Thomas Roseingrave (c.1690/91-1766) - this is suggested by a manuscript where Gibbs has copied sonatas by Roseingrave and Handel.

But Gibbs was back in East Anglia by the 1730s and is not known to have left. He held organist posts in Harwich and then Dedham and from 1748 he was organist at St Mary-le-Tower in Ipswich. Where he remained until his death.

He was a member of the Ipswich Musical Society, where he presumably met fellow-member Gainsborough, who also lived in Ipswich between 1752–1758/9. The Musical Society met regularly at Mr Sparrowe’s house, now known as the Ancient House, and located on Buttermarket, where the building still stands today. He enjoyed a busy performing career across East Anglia, directing performances from the harpsichord.

The subscription list for the Eight Solos for a Violin with a Thorough Bass, Op. 1 numbered a respectable c. 161. Whilst the list has a strong East Anglian focus, including other members of the extended Gibbs family, other subscribers were music societies, Cambridge colleges, and organists. A Mr Peter Thompson of St Paul's Church Yard in London dealt with sales, ordering many copies for resale. Also on the subscription list were composers William Boyce and Maurice Greene and tenor John Beard, who is closely associated with Handel.

In terms of musical influences, Corelli and Geminiani must feature strongly. Geminiani (resident in England from 1714) and Handel's violin sonatas were both influential with English audiences. And the portrait by Gainsborough also includes a page from a sonata by Michael Christian Festing written in 1744. Intriguingly, when Festing died he bequeathed all his music to Sir Joseph Hankey, a noted banker and patron of the arts, to whom Gibbs dedicated his sonatas.

The writing for violin moves between the old and the new. Handelian and Corellian influences exist alongside more galant elements, plus technically demanding writing including chordal string writing. Apart from one, all the sonatas are in four movements resolutely, slow, fast, slow, fast but within this Gibbs introduces variety. He seems to have had a fondness for variation form, using it in four sonatas.

In many was he was a modest, unassuming man, but his portrait and this music reveal a twinkle in his eye. Frequently there are quirky little moments and delightfully characterful writing. This latter includes the use of the Scotch snap, which might reflect a fondness for Scottish taste but also could be a nod to the fact that Ipswich was a Garrison Town, home to the Scots Greys. And musicians from the regiment took part in Gibbs's funeral.

There is something engagingly warm about this music. And the performers bring out a real sense of three friends simply enjoying themselves. Perhaps we can imagine Gibbs playing the sonatas for friends in the Ipswich Musical Society. Certainly the pieces are far and away above a lot of the rather polite sub-Handelian writing in this vein from English composers of the 18th century. These sonatas deserve to be better known and this lovely disc, bringing out the warm-heartedness of the music, should go a long way towards this.

The Brook Street Band (Rachel Harris, Tatty Theo, Carolyn Gibley) at recording sessions (Photo: Robin Bigwood)

Joseph Gibbs (1698-1788) - 8 Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 1 (c1746) [83:44]
Sonata No. 1 in D minor [12:19]
Sonata No. 2 in A major [9:55]
Sonata No. 3 in G major [9:36]
Sonata No. 4 in B flat major [11:40]
Sonata No. 5 in E major [9:04]
Sonata No. 6 in F major [8:58]
Sonata No. 7 in A minor [11:40]
Sonata No. 8 in E flat major [10:19]
The Brook Street Band (Rachel Harris, violin, Tatty Theo, cello, Carolyn Gibley, harpsichord)
Recorded at The Great Barn, Oxnead Hall, Norfolk, UK, 7–10 February 2025
FIRST HAND RECORDS FHR188 1CD [83:44]

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas - record review
Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival - opera review
A colourful & exciting journey: neoclassical composer Julia Thomsen whose music has achieved over 18 million Spotify streams - interview
Intoxicating textures to offset Lenten penitence: Mother of Mercy - Music for Lent from Harry Christophers & The Sixteen - concert review
Letter from Florida: Robert J Carreras experiences Peter Lieberson's 'vehicle through which to reflect a different face in love’s mirror' - concert review
Seductive & expressive: in Time Stands Still, tenor Kieran White & lutenist Cédric Meyer refocus the sound world of Dowland & Danyel - cd review
Not so much Verismo: Eleanor Burke's somewhat abstract staging of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci for English Touring Opera provides a fine setting for Ronald Samm's powerful performance as Canio - opera review
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English lute song & L'Invitation au Voyage: concerts at the Institut français

2026-03-30T12:07:00.000+01:00

Près de votre oreille

The Institut français in South Kensington continues its occasional series of concerts presenting artists making a welcome appearing in London. This time there is the opportunity to hear the period instrument ensemble Près de votre oreille, founded by gamba player Robin Pharo, and soprano Marie-Laure Garnier, recipient of the Médaille d’honneur de l’engagement ultramarin in 2024

In Blessed Echoes on 9 April 2026, eight musicians from Robin Pharo's ensemble Près de votre oreille will be presenting an evening of English lute song featuring music by Alfonso Ferrabosco II, Robert Jones, Thomas Ford, Michael Cavendish, John Dowland, Philipp Rosseter and Thomas Campion. Pharo and Près de votre oreille released a disc of William Lawes' music on Harmonia Mundi last year [see my review]

Then on 11 June there is the chance to hear soprano Marie-Laure Garnier in recital. Her programme, L'Invitation au Voyage will take the listener on an expressive journey featuring beloved songs and arias, Guyanese songs and Afro-American melodies.

Full details from the website.