Mozart
Richard Alston Dance Company, Focus on Alston, The PlaceFriday, 21 October 2011
Time is a rare privilege in a choreographer’s career - in Britain, anyway. We don’t have the equivalents of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham or Paul Taylor, who build careers into their eighties and beyond, with mighty efforts from private patrons... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National OperaThursday, 06 October 2011
Fiona Shaw's new production of The Marriage of Figaro for the ENO focuses on the theme of entrapment. Her first victim? A noisy bee. Don Basilio finds himself so harassed by its buzzing, he confines it to the body of a harpsichord. Magically, a few... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Bass Sir John Tomlinson, Part 2Sunday, 18 September 2011
A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 17 September 2011
After a summer of operas set in what might tactfully be called fancy locations, it comes as a mild shock to return to Wales and a Don Giovanni that actually takes the composer’s instructions as its starting-point. John Caird, whose first ever... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Bass Sir John Tomlinson, Part 1Saturday, 17 September 2011
Next week Sir John Tomlinson (b 1946), renowned mega-bass and routine frequenter of the Covent Garden stage, appears in concert at the Windsor Festival. It is a picturesque halt on a career that sees him circling the world's greatest opera houses in... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Fray, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Van ZwedenWednesday, 31 August 2011
David Fray certainly has the locks to be a piano virtuoso (eat your heart out, Franzi). And he has the looks, the troubled brow, the pallor and a suitably eccentric manner (the Glenn Gould hunch and hum came out for all the runs). But does he... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Opera Up Close, Soho TheatreFriday, 26 August 2011
When you go to a trendy London performance "space" to watch an opera about rape and murder you should probably expect a few shocks. Or, if this ain’t your first Don Giovanni, you should expect not to be surprised by whatever provocations... Read more... |
Why Ticciati will be great for GlyndebourneFriday, 08 July 2011
Robin the boy wonder, as he was somewhat patronisingly dubbed during his prodigious rise to conducting stardom, will make a bracing Batman for Glyndebourne Festival Opera when he takes over from current music director Vladimir Jurowski in January... Read more... |
Music and Maths: A Yardstick to the StarsThursday, 30 June 2011
The history of maths and music is the history of early Greek philosophy, medieval astronomy, of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the two World Wars. While mathematics at its purest may be an abstraction, the quest for its proofs is deeply and... Read more... |
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie, Rhorer, Barbican HallTuesday, 28 June 2011
While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Longborough FestivalFriday, 17 June 2011
The extraordinary Longborough Opera Festival is with us again and for the next six weeks, in Martin and Lizzie Graham’s Palladian barn theatre near Stow-on-the-Wold. This year the world’s unlikeliest Ring cycle reaches Siegfried. But the... Read more... |
Pires, London Symphony Orchestra, Haitink, Barbican HallTuesday, 14 June 2011
It was Groundhog Day. Murray Perahia, due to play the Schumann Piano Concerto last night under Bernard Haitink, was indisposed and at the last minute Maria João Pires rushed in with Mozart 27. Just the same happened in 2006, strangely enough, with... Read more... |
