choral music
Eliane Radigue/New London Chamber Choir, London Sinfonietta, James Weeks, Spitalfields MusicWednesday, 15 June 2011
What strange goings-on at this year's Spitalfields Music festival. One church is set ablaze by a female laptop trio; another is swamped by 17th-century collectivists; one man opens up a black hole with the back of his guitar; and a harpist becomes a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Widmann, BerioFriday, 03 June 2011
This week we’ve some pioneering, trailblazing Mahler with a dramatic twist, courtesy of a conductor who mentored Leonard Bernstein. Elsewhere, there are some disconcerting, dark sounds from a youthful German composer, and a supremely entertaining... Read more... |
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Cadogan HallWednesday, 09 February 2011
We are spoiled for choral choice in Britain. With the likes of The Sixteen, The King’s Singers, Polyphony and I Fagiolini just the start of the roster of talent, and an amateur choral scene of serious heft, the temptation is to look no further than... Read more... |
Elgar's Enigma - A Love Child Named Pearl?Wednesday, 26 January 2011
UPDATE 2015: Four years ago, in January 2011, I wrote this article about the music critic and biographer Michael Kennedy's search for the missing portion of Elgar's life. It identified a Mrs Dora Nelson as the composer's mistress and mother of a... Read more... |
Glee, E4Monday, 10 January 2011
As with pornographic films, what those who watch Glee really want is the money shot. There may be far fewer naked people – although the first episode of the second season did have lascivious shots of two shirtless (allegedly) teenage boys – but you... Read more... |
King's Singers, Cadogan HallSunday, 19 December 2010
An awful lot of bad singing goes on in the name of Christmas. If it’s not the endless piped renditions of Slade and Cliff Richard, then it’s anaemic carol singers in every railway station and foyer. Each street corner becomes a concert hall (albeit... Read more... |
A Choral Christmas on Radio 3Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Christmas is coming, and prepare ye the way for a sledge-load of new music. It’s probably not just Stephen Cleobury’s annual commissioning of new carols for the King’s College Service of Nine Lessons and Carols that does it (though he must be partly... Read more... |
Interview: Eric Whitacre, Virtual ChoirmasterTuesday, 19 October 2010
McDonald's (the hamburger people) are rarely acknowledged for their contributions to the arts, but without them we may never have witnessed the meteoric rise of composer Eric Whitacre. When he was 14, he heard a casting call on the radio for a... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Conductor Stephen LaytonSaturday, 16 October 2010
Conductor and choral scholar Stephen Layton once said that he often wondered what happened to the little boy at his primary school who he thought sang better than he did. The discovering and nurturing of raw talent is an issue very close to his... Read more... |
Geoffrey Burgon revisited, 1941-2010Wednesday, 22 September 2010
To most the music will be more familiar than the name. Geoffrey Burgon, who has died, devoted only a minor portion of his career to composing for television.He also wrote for piano, for trumpet (which he studied at Guildhall School of Music and... Read more... |
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 11 September 2010
Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers are something of a musical enigma. Neither their true pitch nor order of movements, their origins, nor even whether they were intended as a complete sequence is known for certain, prompting scholar Denis Arnold to conclude... Read more... |
The Lying Down Concert: Earthrise, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 05 September 2010
We should lie down to listen to music much more often. Gravity pulls away the thought and frown lines, smoothes the intellectual tracks and folds on the face, while you feel the blood in your head pumping lushly to dreamier parts of your brain.... Read more... |
