Wigmore Hall
Ismene Brown
When you go to a Schubert recital, you’re plunged into a whirlpool of emotional ambivalence, heat and chill running together, music and lyrics not always playing the same tune. When Schubert seizes on a poem, it’s not because he’s interested in Mickey-Mousing that poet’s sentiments - on the contrary, he may see a purple passage of words and set it simply, as if deflating it, or he may take a plain statement of action (looking out of a window, say) and fill that phrase with complex music containing a world of dark feeling.When Matthias Goerne is the singer, this counterpoint gets a third layer Read more ...
jonathan.wikeley
What a splendid little ensemble the Purcell Quartet is. The sort of group that you rather hope might reduce in size as the years go on, so that in the end you can put them in your pocket and carry them around with you all the time. If ever an ensemble could provide a soundtrack to the ups and downs of life then this is it.Which is just as well really, because this little celebration of Purcell’s music covered the whole gamut of emotions, from heart-wrenching song to boisterous sonata to the frankly ludicrous When the Cock Begins to Crow, replete with busy bees, singing crickets and lazy sluts Read more ...