From my monthly essay in The Critic: Stars have been falling out of opera like apples in late summer. Jonas Kaufmann, a serial drop-out, now has a second career as a festival manager. Anna Netrebko […]
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week: There’s more content in this compilation than a weary reviewer has a right to expect. Coming off the back of a pointless set of Shostakovich symphonies, this chunky […]
Message from Teatro San Carlo, in Napoli: Jonas Kaufmann / Ludovic Tézier Concert Postponed. The kind public is advised that, due to the artist Jonas Kaufmann’s unavailability due to Covid-19, the Jonas Kauffmann / Ludovic […]
The International Vocal Competition (IVC) is a classical singing competition that has attracted singers from all over the world to ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands since 1954. Once a small singing competition aimed at singers from the […]
Jake Heggie (Photo: James Niebuhr) Jake Heggie‘s song cycle for soprano, violin and string quartet, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope is receiving its UK premiere at violinist Madeleine Mitchell‘s The Red Violin Festival […]
It’s tempting to call this Jonas Kaufmann’s love affairs: he is very much the main protagonist here (along of course its Puccini himself). This follows on from his first Puccini album in 2015 – Nessun […]
The earliest known electronic instrument is something of an intellectual cult. So it’s quite a surprise to find it being played at the Central Ohio Symphony. And this is just the beginning. The world premiere […]
Mark Ainley from the Piano Files has posted the only known video of Dinu Lipatti to YouTube. It’s a private, silent film from the 1947 Lucerne festival and it features luminaries of those times. The […]
Rimsky Korsakov’s third opera The Snow Maiden (premiered 1882) draws upon pagan Russian folklore (albeit mediated through a fairly recent play by Alexander Ostrovsky) about the appeasing of the sun god Yarilo, who is jealous […]
The evening opened with a refreshing and commanding account of the Beethoven, Manfred Honeck leaving no doubt as to his mastery of the Austro-German tradition. His robust but unforced approach elicited sumptuous playing,allowing the music […]
