Features
Peter Whelan
There's something undeniable about the way music can weave itself into the fabric of our lives, shaping our passions and leaving an indelible mark on our journeys. For me, this magic has been particularly intertwined with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra. My first encounter with them, back in 1992, wasn't live in a concert hall, but rather through the flickering screen of a television.A Proms performance of Handel's monumental oratorio Israel in Egypt had captivated me so completely that I, a wide-eyed teenager, felt compelled to record it onto a VHS tape. I watched it on repeat, immersing Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
A single pair of swans glided serenely under the bridges of the river Ill as I walked to the premiere of the Opéra National du Rhin’s new production of Lohengrin in Strasbourg on Sunday.It felt like an auspicious omen for Michael Spyres’s first full performance of a major Wagnerian role. Spyres’s initiation comes after the Missouri-born singer’s acclaimed flights across huge tracts of the Baroque, classical and Romantic repertoire – a journey taken on the mighty but sensitive wings of his category-busting, three-octave-wide “baritenor” voice.The packed house in the 1820s theatre (many of them Read more ...
Laurence Cummings
At the time of writing, rehearsals are well under way for the London Handel Festival 2024. It’s a big year for me as it’s my 25th and final year as Musical Director.Though preparations are keeping me very busy, I have found the odd quiet moment to reflect on the last 25 years. In fact it was 31 years ago that Denys Darlow first asked me to play in the LHF. He was organist of St George’s Hanover Square, and he loved to perform and record Bach Cantatas for BBC Radio 3, until one day a member of the public came up to him and said “You’ve got a bit of a cheek, performing Bach’s music in Handel’s Read more ...
Tom Greed
For musicians, the period from early 2020 to mid-2021 was one of great reflection, with so many questions to puzzle over. Could we satisfy the basic need to interact with others and express ourselves? What on earth was Zoom, and how, as performers, could we learn to use technology to provide live experiences? Would things ever go back to the way they were? And should they?Avenue Ensemble was a concept that I began to sketch out during the pandemic. It was partly inspired by the longing to perform chamber music with friends once again when restrictions were finally over, but predominantly due Read more ...
Paco Peña
There are moments that forever remain imprinted in our consciousness, engraved on the general map of our lives. I cannot forget the excitement of seeing snow for the first time in Córdoba, aged three or four, rushing to walk on it only to slip straight away and fall on my behind! Or when I discovered the sea, in Cádiz.Nor do I forget the tense moments, such as when my mother left the house every day before dawn to go to the wholesale market with empty pockets, to start the daily adventure of acquiring vegetables, on credit, which she would then sell on her stall in order to settle with the Read more ...
Sean Gandini
I am a juggler. My wife Kati Ylä-Hokkala is also a juggler. Our life for the last three decades has been juggling. We have been fortunate to be practising this art form at a time when mathematical and creative developments meant that our vocabulary went from about 30 patterns to thousands. The Golden Age of juggling.In 2010 our lovely patron Angus MacKechnie asked us to put together a new piece for the outdoor space outside London's National Theatre. The late great Pina Bausch had just died and we decided to make a one-off tribute to her. We made a piece called Smashed. I had been intrigued Read more ...
Hilary Summers
Back in the summer of 2020 when the arts industry was largely dormant and many professional singers were either moodily knocking back the gin or uploading poor quality phone videos of themselves bellowing Puccini arias from their doorsteps, I received an email.Entitled “Small Project”, it was from Maarten Ornstein, a Dutch bass clarinettist working in jazz and classical, who wondered if I’d be up for a collaboration with himself and the Dutch lutenist, Mike Fentross. It seemed like an intriguing combination so I consulted my hectic schedule. I felt that amongst dog walks and the next episode Read more ...
theartsdesk
From wandering Rachmaninoff to Ulysses tribute, or a poet’s boyhood in Dundee to sleeplessness and arboreal inner lives, our reviewers share their literary picks from 2023.Prototype Press continues to publish much of the most interesting British fiction; alongside Jen Calleja’s Vehicle, a particular favourite of mine was Helen Palmer’s Pleasure Beach (Prototype, £12). Set in Blackpool on the 16th June 1999, the novel is a homage to James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): the homosocial dynamic between Daedelus and Bloom is swapped for two women trying to remember if they slept together at a party the Read more ...
David Nice
However dark the future may seem for UK arts funding, each year begins with a beacon of light, passed on to shine twice more, in the Easter and summer holidays: the ever more resourceful and generous concertgiving of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, always among the highlights of the classical music scene.Their first programme of 2023, under the fascinating French conductor Alexandre Bloch, brought razor-sharp Britten, melodic Anna Clyne and incandescent Richard Strauss (all technical hurdles supply overcome in Also sprach Zarathustra). Three months later they were pushing the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Wait, and your wishes are answered. That seemed to be the case during the theatre year just gone, following on from 2022 when new British writing of quality seemed thin on the ground.That couldn't have been further from the case during 2023, not just at such venues of choice like the National, which fielded two big, bold new British plays amongst a generally strong output from artistic director Rufus Norris across the year, but in smaller venues too: both the Bush and the Hampstead Downstairs were amongst those punching above their weight, in neither case for the first time.Anoushka Lucas's Read more ...
theartsdesk
Numbers indicate if entries are listed in order of preferenceSaskia BaronAnatomy of a FallBrokerFallen LeavesJoylandKillers of the Flower MoonOtto Baxter: Not a F**ing Horror StoryReturn to SeoulSt OmerScrapperA Thousand and OneThe reason I go to the cinema is mainly to experience other people’s lives and thoughts but also to escape for a few hours from the gerbil wheel of anxiety about the world that spins constantly in my head. 2023 was not a great year for anyone of a fretful disposition, but these were the movies that for a while made me happy and distracted in the dark of the movie Read more ...
David Nice
Does “the practice of opera singing in Italy” need help from UNESCO, which has newly inscribed it on the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”? Italian opera is surely immensely popular worldwide. But when it comes to practising the art properly, its greatest senior exponent, Riccardo Muti, powerfully argues that Verdi and Bellini, his most recent special projects in the city where he lives, Ravenna, need as much respect and care as Beethoven or Schubert.Since 2004, the now 82-year-old Muti's long-term project for the future has centred around his Luigi Read more ...