choral music
David Nice
“Translated Daughter, come down and startle/Composing mortals with immortal fire.” So W H Auden invokes heavenly Cecilia, patron saint of music, and it seems she did just that with Benjamin Britten, who set Auden’s text for unaccompanied choir and happened to be born on the saint’s day 100 years ago.On the day itself, this Hymn to St Cecilia was the one piece that cried out to be heard, so last night I headed up to Islington to hear The Sixteen – in this case The Twenty-Two plus harp and piano - in the atmospheric surroundings of the spooky Union Chapel, commandeered as part of the Barbican Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Earlier this year early music ensemble Stile Antico released a really fabulous disc. The Phoenix Rising is a collage of the Tudor church-music classics that all gained their status and familiarity thanks to the work of the Carnegie Trust and their Tudor Church Music edition. The recording has – very deservedly – won or been nominated for a handful of awards, and if this were a CD review I’d be able to leave it at that. Unfortunately it’s a concert review, and last night’s performance at Cadogan Hall was a different matter.In a UK market saturated with early music singing groups – The Sixteen Read more ...
David Nice
How many reviews of War Requiem do you want to read in Britten centenary year? This is theartsdesk’s fourth, and my second – simply because though I reckon one live performance every five years is enough, Rattle’s much-anticipated Berlin Philharmonic interpretation fell almost entirely flat, and I wanted to hear at least one good enough to move me to tears.Last night’s under the special circumstances of Remembrance Sunday wasn’t just good; it hit the heights and plumbed the depths, with no weak link in any of the soloists, choirs, orchestra or instrumental soloists. So much so that the tears Read more ...
David Nice
Back at the Barbican for a new season after a Far Eastern tour, the BBC Symphony Orchestra returned to pull off a characteristic stunt, a generous four-work programme featuring at least one piece surely no-one in the audience woud have heard live before. This time, the first quarter belonged exclusively to the unaccompanied BBC Singers in one of the most demanding sets of the choral repertoire. After which the seemingly humble but dogged and vivacious Marc Minkowski helped create orchestral magic of three very different kinds, defining French composers’ infinite capacity for play.Serious Read more ...
David Nice
If ever there were a week for London to celebrate Poulenc in the lamentably under-commemorated 50th anniversary year of his death, this is it. Two major choral works and two fun concertos at last join the party. But if Figure Humaine and the Concerto for Two Pianos look like being well positioned in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Barbican programme on Saturday, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s chosen two were the victims of his own success in Prokofiev interpretation. The Seventh Symphony, chronologically the last in this programme of works circa 1950 to tie in with The Rest is Noise festival’s agenda, Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It was an inspired Manchester International Festival initiative to devote a concert to the work of Sir John Tavener as he approaches his 70th birthday. Not only that, but the programme featured three world premieres, including a choral piece specially commissioned for the MIF Sacred Voices, made up of 70 women from all faiths and none. Leading it all with the BBC Philharmonic was conductor Tecwyn Evans.The starting point was the first performance of “Love Duet”, written as the central “still point” of Tavener’s pantomime The Play of Krishna. Inspired by The Magic Flute, where Papageno and Read more ...
David Nice
How often should a music-lover go to hear Britten’s most layered masterpiece? From personal experience, I’d say not more than once every five years, if you want to keep a sense of occasion fresh. So how often should an orchestra play it? Sir Simon Rattle and his Berlin Philharmonic decided they could manage three nights in a row towards the end of their 2013-14 season. At the first of the performances, it already felt like a lot might have been kept in check. This, alas, was for the most part the kind of workaday performance Shostakovich, who rated the work alongside Mahler’s Das Lied Read more ...
David Nice
Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and Broadway to another enthusiasm, tuneful British music. Yet who merits them better than he?His brand of hectic brilliance was sometimes too much for the Barbican Hall’s magnifying tendencies, but a keen-sprung technique – a word not used enough in culinary TV – leapt over some of the gloopier hurdles in an overture by Walton and a swoony concerto by York Bowen. With Vaughan Williams’s Five Tudor Portraits Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Are films for the senior demographic the new rock’n’roll? As the population ages and people keep their marbles for longer, entertainments for the grey pound, as it’s charmingly called, must be laid on. The job of films like The Last Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and now Song for Marion is to tend towards the cheerful and the redemptive. Age is a bugger, they all accept, but it ain’t over till the fat lady sings – or in the case of Song for Marion, till Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp have given their leathery larynxes a public work-out.In this case old age really is flirting with age- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After seven years, Aled Jones is stepping down as presenter of Radio 3's Sunday evening programme, The Choir. During his stint at the helm of the 90-minute show, the ebullient Welshman has showcased choral classics ancient and modern, hosted choirs from Africa, Denmark and Fiji, and fronted a memorable special on Richard Rodney Bennett.Since apparently no single individual could replace Jones (yet), Radio 3 has lined up six special editions of The Choir, each of them presented by a notable name from the choral music sphere. Conductor Suzi Digby (pictured below), who specialises in working Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Where next for Gareth Malone, who would ardently like to teach the entire planet to sing in perfect harmony? He began all those series ago with the ruffians and rapscallions who make up the average sixth form, most recently took his outreach work to tone-deaf soldiers’ spouses and for his next stop he’s boarding a plane to export The Choir Stateside. Other constituencies who could use a healing stint singing under Malone's pastoral wing would include politicians, football supporters and anyone to do with The X Factor. But for the moment, it’s back to the office for Gareth.In ep one of The Read more ...
charlotte.gardner
What better work for Harry Bicket and The English Concert to perform at the Proms than Bach's joyous Mass in B Minor. Joyous firstly because of the music itself, with its vast stylistic and emotional range. Joyous secondly because, despite the intense scholarship to which Bach and his music have been subjected over the years, its genesis remains unusually shrouded in mystery for such a major work.While it seems likely that Bach viewed the work as a summation and climax of his life's music, that's about as much as we can guess. There's no evidence to suggest that he performed it as a whole Read more ...