BBC Radio 2 Arts Show with Claudia Winkleman
Delighted to be back as a regular guest on the the Radio 2 Arts Show with the amazing Claudia Winkleman 03/10/2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hcmtp 06/03/2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053zw4n… [Read More]
The Girl of the Golden West, English National Opera, London Coliseum
Well, there won’t be any complaints about performing this one in English – or should that be American. Thank heavens Richard Jones has made Puccini’s spaghetti western an operatic-home-counties-free-zone and got his cast delivering Kelley Rourke’s translation…
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Litton, Barbican Hall
The problem with programming Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony – and only the very bold and resourceful and/or the BBC are ever likely to do so – is that it eclipses everything, and I mean everything, in its…
A Conversation With LINUS ROTH: Crusading for Weinberg
The Polish composer Miecyzlaw Weinberg – his Holocaust opera The Passenger caused quite a stir in David Pountney’s premiere staging – has a new champion. The talented young German violinist Linus Roth has taken his music and…
Otello, English National Opera, London Coliseum
It is 30 years ago – but feels like another life – that David Alden first exploded on to English National Opera’s Coliseum stage with his forever notorious cut-price staging of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. None of us there…
In Conversation and in Song with SOPHIE-LOUISE DANN
SOPHIE-LOUISE DANN Sunday 9th November 2014, St James Studio Sophie-Louise Dann is quite simply one of the most engaging and versatile musical theatre performers that the UK has ever produced. Anyone catching her recently in Forbidden Broadway…
Prom 64, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall
They were, of course, applauded on to the platform – all of them – and when at the close Simon Rattle turned to us and said “I think you know this already but there is no audience…
A Conversation With VASILY PETRENKO: Shostakovich Symphony No.13 “Babi Yar”
With the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s much-lauded Shostakovich cycle on Naxos the young maestro talks to Edward Seckerson about a masterpiece the Soviet authorities tried but failed to sabotage at its first performances. YevgenyYevtushenko’s poem “Babi…
Prom 59, “Elektra”, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov, Royal Albert Hall
How much familial dysfunction and lust – whether for sexual gratification or revenge – can one take in a single weekend? Salome and Elektra back-to back may on paper seem like a feast of divine decadence but…
Prom 58, “Salome”, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Runnicles, Royal Albert Hall
It has been said many times (and by Strauss himself) that the title role of Strauss’ Salome requires at least two different voices. Nina Stemme has both of them. And so seamlessly, artfully, are they rolled into…
