18th century
David Nice
One of the galvanizing wonders of the operatic world happened when David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was new, back in 2006: the sight and sound of Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano in seamless dual role as conductor and recitative fortepianist.Now he’s back, and better than ever, with more than a gimmick to offer in this latest revival: there are no big names in the cast, but six out of the eight principals are Italian – this Figaro is, of course, sung to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s original, dazzling adaptation of Beaumarchais’ play – and young when the characters Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It had been a tense week, explained Jonathan Sells, the artistic director and bass-baritone of Solomon’s Knot, from the stage of the Wigmore Hall: unsure if the concert would go ahead, unsure who exactly would be able to perform, unsure if there would be anyone in the audience.In the event it did go ahead, there was an audience present (although I was watching the livestream) and the hastily revised cast cramming the stage gave a joyful and uplifting account of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio that was a triumph in the circumstances.Solomon’s Knot’s credo is “to blow the dust off early music” and “ Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The world of the 17th-century tavern is a long way from the contemporary concert hall. A quick glance at the scene in paintings by Jan Steen or his contemporaries shows us a joyful tangle of men and women, dogs, cats and small children, all engaged in a riot of drinking, dancing, brawling, music-making and love-making (occasionally even napping) while hens stroll officiously across the floor pecking up crumbs. It looks noisy, dirty and a jolly good time.There were no dogs or hens (or napping, that I could see) at Bjarte Eike’s latest Alehouse Session at the handsome Middle Temple Hall. But, Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Peter Whelan is best known to Scottish audiences from his years of service as principal bassoon in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He left to pursue other projects several years ago, the most illustrious of which has probably been his work with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and his own Ensemble Marsyas, both of which demonstrate his interest in and flair for the music of the Baroque and Classical periods.He returned to the SCO on Thursday night, but on the podium rather than in the band, and his expertise in period performance lit up a really exciting performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 102. It Read more ...
Robert Beale
The joint enterprise of soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, with Manchester Camerata, in recording publicly all Mozart’s piano concertos alongside his opera overtures – with the project theme “Mozart, made in Manchester” – was rudely interrupted after 2019 by you-know-what. Last night they were all back together at Chetham’s School of Music, and it was just like they’d never been gone. The concertos on the order paper were Nos. 22 and 23: the latter in A major a great favourite for its sunny, optimistic beginning and end, the former, in C minor, possibly a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Rarely has the revolving door of opera twirled so efficiently. David McVicar’s venerable production of Rigoletto may have exited the Royal Opera on Monday (presumably with one final squeak of protest from that pesky revolve), replaced by a shiny new incumbent, but by Wednesday the director was back on the stage with another of his long-lived classics: The Magic Flute.We may be approaching the show’s 20th anniversary, but visually it’s still serving up the goods. After a year of digital screens and chamber restrictions, black-box sets and two-handers, John Macfarlane’s lavish designs and the Read more ...
David Nice
It looked as if the Royal Opera might be trying to keep its distance with the first new production since lockdown. After all, Mozart’s last opera – only the Overture and March of the Priests in The Magic Flute remained to be composed in the fatal year of 1791 after the 18 days spent working on Tito – seems to have been fairly minimally staged for Emperor Leopold II's Prague coronation as King of Bohemia. When the composer’s widow Constanze revived the work after his death, it was as a series of concert performances (with Beethoven playing a Mozart concerto between the acts on at least one Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The baroque music ensemble Arcangelo have been around since 2010 but I hadn’t heard them before this pair of concerts streamed from Wigmore Hall in the last week. But what I heard has certainly encouraged me to seek out more – and they have quickly built up a large discography ready to be tucked into. This includes the Bach violin concertos with Alina Ibragimova, who joined them for a journey through Vivaldi, Bach and Corelli last Friday, while frequent collaborator Iestyn Davies duetted with Carolyn Sampson in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater on Tuesday.The Wigmore Hall has been a particular oasis Read more ...
Robert Beale
For the newest performance of their part-postponed “Winter Season” on film, the Hallé return to their rehearsal and performance centre in Ancoats, and with the help of piano soloist-director Paul Lewis and guest leader-director Eva Thórarinsdóttir offer a display of the capability of their orchestra members as chamber musicians.So first we see again the little sequence of musicians heading through Manchester city centre to Hallé St Peter’s, and before the music starts Paul Lewis introduces Mozart’s Piano Quintet in E flat K452, and Sergio Castelló-López, clarinet, and Elena Comelli, bassoon, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Aside from the happy accident of longevity, something that set Bach and Handel and Telemann apart from their contemporaries was fluency. I’m speaking here of musical rather than verbal tongues: the least polyglot of them was Bach, with his command of four languages, German, Latin, French and Italian, in decreasing degrees of facility. While Handel criss-crossed Europe, Bach and Telemann anchored themselves in small areas of central and northern Germany respectively.Yet the world came to them. Bach especially composed in French and Italian with mother-tongue fluency, albeit a strong German Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Catalan director Albert Serra’s interest in late 18th century France is well established – his previous film was The Death of Louis XIV – but the title of his new one has precious little to do with the triadic revolutionary slogan that swept away the French monarchy at the end of it. If Liberté celebrates freedom in any sense, it’s that of libertinage, libertinism, the rejection of moral and especially sexual restraints that was being celebrated at the time by the Marquis de Sade, whose philosophical presence is a commanding one here (alongside, cinematically, Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose final Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Amid madness, fear and death, there is still an oasis in the music of Bach - and Bach played by András Schiff in the Wigmore Hall is a special type of haven. Normally one can’t get in to those concerts because they are instantly sold out, even though he usually does each one twice. Instead, this performance was beamed live into our own computers wherever we may be, and after the past few days, my goodness, we needed it. Playing into the empty cavern of the Wigmore’s auditorium - the hall that is usually his home from home - Schiff spoke to his invisible audience through the cameras, Read more ...