At the core of the Australian Chamber Orchestra is a string ensemble, soloistic in nature, enquiring in spirit, whose connections one to the other make for a palpable kind of musical telepathy. Energy and vitality are key…
The starting and finishing point for Errollyn Wallen and Bonnie Greer’s chamber opera Yes is Greer’s 2009 appearance on BBC’s Question Time alongside the British National Party’s Nick Griffin. Entering the Linbury auditorium – opened up on…
The OAE billed this one 1700s London & the Fab Four which I guess left it to us, the audience, to decide who might be the Lennon and McCartney of the evening. JC Bach and Carl Friedrich…
Sounding for all the world like the latest App for a certain smartphone, the I, Culture Orchestra is the youngest orchestra on the planet – just seven concerts old. In essence it’s the official orchestra of the…
Sometimes the most disturbing images exist only in our imaginations – and so the questions posed in the preface to Bartok’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle become especially pertinent: “Where did this happen – outside or within?…
The venerable and venerated Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra gave the first ever complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies and Riccardo Chailly, their 19th Kapellmeister, was impatient to renew that sense of revelation and surprise in an age when each…
Jonas Kaufmann has re-written the Rule Book on tenors. A lyric voice that darkens to embrace the heroic repertoire, an occasional heldentenor who can also sing Lehár with supreme elegance, a German who is utterly, completely, and…
We actually don’t need the billowing front cloth, the torrential rain, or strafing searchlights – from the moment Wagner lays bare those sizzling open fifths in the strings he does the tempest-tossed thing for us. Indeed that…
Precious few conductors bring an aura of their own into the concert hall, still fewer change our perceptions of music and the way we listen to it. Claudio Abbado is one. And the orchestra he hand-picked back…
As the orchestra belatedly tunes up, a blind Don Basilio taps his way to the harpsichord at the side of the stage. His clothes are recognisably 18th century, as is his instrument. But the labyrinthine set beyond…