A Conversation With DAME JANET BAKER
Every now and again – but only very rarely – a professional engagement comes along that is so personal, so loaded with treasured associations, that it transcends all normal parameters and takes on a significance all of…
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…
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…
A Conversation With CORINNE WINTERS: Life before and after the London ‘Traviata’
In February 2013 Corinne Winters created an absolute sensation in her operatic European debut when Peter Konwitschny’s starkly intense staging of Verdi’s La Traviata arrived at English National Opera. Vocally, physically, dramatically her Violetta (“the whore who…
A Conversation With VASILY PETRENKO: Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14
At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, as ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity… a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life…
A Conversation With REINHARD GOEBEL & MIRIJAM CONTZEN: New Mozart Violin Concertos recording
In Leopold Mozart’s old house (now a museum) in the Bavarian city of Augsburg a piano tuner is hard at work tuning one of the working exhibits – a venerable clavichord. Enter Reinhard Goebel and Mirijam Contzen…
A Conversation With RUPERT GOOLD & DUNCAN SHEIK: ‘American Psycho’ – A New Musical Thriller
In the season of goodwill a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho might earn itself the subtitle “NOT the Christmas Show” – but when the composer is Duncan Sheik, he of the…
A Conversation With GIANLUCA MARCIANO: Italian style and traditions
Bowing in at the London Coliseum for the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous staging of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, conductor Gianluca Marciano is fast building a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and stylistically incisive of…
A Conversation With VASILY PETRENKO: His Shostakovich symphony cycle
As Vasily Petrenko’s much-lauded Shostakovich symphony cycle moves closer to completion we reach the renegade Fourth Symphony written in 1935 and driven underground by Stalin and his establishment naysayers. This astonishing piece – which remained unperformed for…
A Conversation With MARY MILLER & ANDREW LITTON: Bergen Opera
In the listening room of Grieg Hall, Bergen – a concert hall sometimes masquerading as a theatre and vice versa – Edward Seckerson talks to Mary Miller, Director of Bergen National Opera, and Andrew Litton, Music Director…
