The elements were no less a presence in the final concert of this week-long festival and provided the thematic ‘glue’ to an otherwise seemingly unrelated sequence of music. Proceedings began with a slice of juvenilia […]
Jennifer Higdon’s six-minute Fiery Red forms the second part of her two movement Piano Trio (a 2003 commission) and continues her preoccupation as to whether colour can convey mood. Whatever the answer, Emma Roijackers (violin), […]
Once again, Laura Rickard curated this week-long festival of a dozen or so events, this year turning her attention to the elements: earth, air, fire and water. For the first concert I attended, the natural […]
It’s been a year of firsts as far as Tosca is concerned: the Royal Opera House having begun the present season back in September with its first new production of the work in almost twenty […]
Like a breath of bracing Yorkshire air, Northern Ballet’s brand-new Gentleman Jack swept into Sadler’s Wells, bringing a truly refreshing new narrative to the stage: the story of the ‘first modern lesbian’, Anna Lister aka […]
A very personal programme this, hardly one to attract crowds and very different in tone from the team’s multi-media take on Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie for the Southbank’s Multitudes festival. Both the RPO’s advance publicity and the conductor’s pre-concert […]
Arnold Bax’s lavishly scored Tintagel was inspired by a holiday romance with pianist Harriet Cohen whilst visiting the north Cornish coast in 1917. Whether an evocation of Atlantic rollers, the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel or an encapsulation […]
London’s South Bank Centre is following up 2025’s series of multimedia events with a further sequence entitled ‘Multitudes’. While inclusivity and genre-bending can sometimes amount to little more than an excuse for ceding art music […]
As part of the Southbank Centre’s ‘Multitudes’ festival, pairing music with works in other art forms, this concert brought together Messiaen’s mighty Turangalîla-symphonie with a new film animation by 1927 Studios. One would have thought that Messiaen’s […]
In Jack Furness’s new production of The Flying Dutchman for Welsh National Opera, Senta becomes the drama’s focus, even before she is born. Her mother’s difficult labour pains are choreographed as the backdrop to the musical drama of the Overture, […]
