tue 19/03/2024

Vivaldi

Franco Fagioli on performing the Baroque: 'a challenge is to interpret beyond the musical notation'

I started singing when I was nine years old in my primary school choir. I sang plenty of solos there before moving on to another children’s choir; that was a formative experience for me. At this point, I was singing the soprano part and from here I...

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Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: A Reimagining, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - a gentle exploration of life, love and death

Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: A Reimagining – it’s not a title that trips off the tongue. Nor one, frankly, that inspires much excitement, with its clunky functionality and on-trend buzzword. But set that aside and buy a ticket immediately, because...

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Bell, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - life and imagination

You can’t help liking Joshua Bell. The Peter Pan violin soloist of the classical world has been in the business for more than 30 years and still has his boyish looks and, more importantly, his enthusiasm and sense of enjoyment in making music. At...

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Andreas Scholl, Accademia Bizantina, Barbican

Marian devotions have given us some of sacred music’s most striking works, from graceful Ave Marias to anguished settings of the Stabat Mater. Andreas Scholl and musicologist Bernardo Ticci have recently gone in search of some less familiar ones –...

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Gerhardt, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place

What's not to like, or love, would have to be the sensible response to both the opening programme of Kings Place's year-long Cello Unwrapped festival at Kings Place and its life-enhancing execution. Symmetries abounded – between Alban Gerhardt's...

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Lammermuir Festival 2016, East Lothian

It’s just a short trip down the A1 from Edinburgh. But East Lothian – with its big skies, wide-open spaces, empty beaches and seemingly inexhaustable supply of quaint, historic villages – feels like a long, long way from the Scottish capital....

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Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC, BBC Four

Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we...

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McGregor/Spuck, Ballett Zürich, Edinburgh Playhouse

New Edinburgh Festival director Fergus Linehan has made it clear he wants to offer things people actually want to see. So including Wayne McGregor - prolific, popular, energetically self-promoting doyen of contemporary dance - in the dance...

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Tawadros, AAM, Tognetti, Milton Court

Fusion between Christian Venice and the Ottoman east started up at least as early as the 15th century, accompanied by a superb portrait of Sultan Mehmet II attributed to Gentile Bellini (pictured below). So what Egyptian-born oud (read oriental lute...

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Classical CDs Weekly: CPE Bach, Busoni, Vivaldi

 CPE Bach: Symphonies Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Rebecca Miller (Signum)Think of musical perfection and you think of JS Bach. Every note perfectly placed, every harmonic sequence pleasing in its logic, every extended structure...

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Benedetti, La Cetra, Saffron Hall

There's a whole fairytale backstory to be told here. The residents of Saffron Walden and the surrounding area still can't quite believe their good fortune. The North Essex town and its state secondary school have been gifted a new 730-seat concert...

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Benedetti, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Having been put to the fiddle at the age of five, Nicola Benedetti appreciates the value of making music at an early age. She is fiercely committed to music education and developing new talent. So it was a joy to see her playing enthusiastically...

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