Manchester
Album: Witch Fever - CongregationSaturday, 22 October 2022
Witch Fever are a seething punk outfit from Manchester whose debut album rampages at the patriarchy with unbridled fury. The tone throughout is summed up in “Sour”, wherein grimy, gloomy riffin’ is accompanied by oblique references to Christianity,... Read more... |
Album: Aitch - Close to HomeThursday, 18 August 2022
22 is a pretty young age to be jaded. But this album starts out with Mancunian rapper Aitch detailing how tough it is at the top, and how traumatised he is by life: "sitting on my throne with an open stare / 'cause to me it's just a broken chair".... Read more... |
Hughes, Manchester Collective, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester review - new work and stunning singingFriday, 24 June 2022
Manchester Collective were back on home ground last night in the tour of a programme featuring the first performances of a new song cycle by Edmund Finnis, Out of the Dawn’s Mind. Soprano soloist was the amazing Ruby Hughes.It was home ground for... Read more... |
Madama Butterfly, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an opera masterclassMonday, 30 May 2022
An opera in the Hallé concert series, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, is rather like a blend of a religious observance and a masterclass in orchestral playing and singing technique.The season finale at the Bridgewater Hall was Madama Butterfly, the... Read more... |
Album: Liam Gallagher - C'Mon You KnowWednesday, 25 May 2022
While Britpop was a retrogressive media construct, Oasis were a genuine socio-musical phenomenon (albeit also retrogressive!). And at their heart was, of course, Liam Gallagher, bullishly Manc, sneeringly rude and pugnaciously charismatic, a proper... Read more... |
Album: Everything Everything - Raw Data FeelTuesday, 17 May 2022
Since their 2010 debut, Man Alive, Everything Everything have dissected the various structures of human relationships, from socio-political to interpersonal, but all in their own experimental art-rock sound.As a result, their recent albums took on... Read more... |
Dandy, BBC Philharmonic, New, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - energy and fierce attentionMonday, 16 May 2022
Saturday’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic was in large measure about the Mahlers – Gustav and Alma. The former’s First Symphony formed the substantial second part of the programme: Frau Mahler was the inspiration of the piece that opened the... Read more... |
Osborne, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an eclectic mixFriday, 13 May 2022
The Mancunian tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams – a symphonic cycle shared by the BBC Philharmonic and Hallé – reached its conclusion with the Eighth Symphony last night. But, unlike most concerts in the RVW150 sequence, in this one (the final... Read more... |
Rangwanasha, Williams, Hallé Orchestra and Choirs, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - epic Vaughan WilliamsMonday, 02 May 2022
In the first and sixth symphonies of Vaughan Williams, Sir Mark Elder had two of the most ambitious and rewarding of the whole canon to present in Saturday’s VW 150 concert, which consisted of those two works alone. A Sea Symphony in particular (the... Read more... |
Hallé, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - valedictory Vaughan WilliamsFriday, 22 April 2022
The baton passed, metaphorically, to the Hallé last night in the Vaughan Williams symphony cycle shared between them and the BBC Philharmonic to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary. Literally, that baton was in the same hand as on the last date,... Read more... |
BBC Philharmonic, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester - passionate advocacy for Vaughan WilliamsMonday, 11 April 2022
At first sight, Vaughan Williams’ Second and Seventh Symphonies might seem to have a lot in common. Both are quite programmatic and pictorial, the second (the London) including music that might have finished up as a tone poem, and the seventh (... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Escalators, dead leaves and a sixth-century bardSaturday, 02 April 2022
Eric Nathan: Missing Words (New Focus Recordings)“Inspired by words from Schottenfreude by Ben Schott” reads this double album’s tagline, a high-concept project based on Schott’s 2013 lexicon of newly-invented German compound words. Words like... Read more... |
