Saturday night and jubilant Middlesborough football supporters may have taken over Trafalgar Square but inside St Martin-in-the-Field’s airy nave, period ensemble, La Nuova Musica, have taken to the stage. All is calm as the musicians tune up. The candelabras are lit on this summer’s evening and the East window over the altar commands our attention….
Category: Concert
National address: Chorus of English National Opera, St Martin in the Fields
No doubt about it, this was one of those concerts where my batteries felt properly recharged, restored to full strength with the power of these voices, somehow still flowing through me. A real privilege to hear such a fine group of singers at such close quarters, presenting a programme as individual as their own distinctive…
Ice flows: Penguin Cafe, Barbican, London
Penguin Cafe’s recent performance at London’s Barbican Centre is likely to go down, in my own personal annals, as one of my favourite concerts of all time. It still feels like hyperbole to type that: it was only a few weeks ago. But how can I explain? – that wave of euphoria that carries you…
Manc union: Prom 20, Manchester Collective with Mahan Esfahani
Back to the ‘dome from home’ for another evening, and for what turned out to be one of the most thrilling Proms I’ve ever attended, for a whole host of reasons. Mainly, I think it was the sheer energy sustained throughout – the performers set out to electrify the audience, and succeeded. Rewind to what…
Kensington Igor: Prom 8, Pergolesi ‘Stabat mater’ & Stravinsky ‘Pulcinella’
It’s a phrase we’ll hopefully hear a lot more of in the coming weeks and months: “it’s good to be back”. Cliché, perhaps: but the thought filled me like a billowing sail when the Royal Albert Hall loomed into view for my first live Prom of the season. There isn’t another classical music experience quite…
Lieder among wo/men: Carolyn Sampson, Roderick Williams & Joseph Middleton in concert
At this year’s Leeds Lieder festival, I finally got to see – for the first time – a form of classical recital I’d been thinking, and even occasionally writing, about for some time: one that behaved like a rock concert. Fitting, then, that we were surprised, amused, shaken up and energised. But was it a…
World’s Finest Musicians Perform in Raphael Court at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Photograph : Rebecca Reid Just when you think you are getting blasé about streamed events, there comes along a concert that you shouldn’t ignore. Conductor Oliver Zeffman is young and has grand ideas. During the pandemic, he commissioned opera-film, Eight Songs from Isolation, from eight leading composers to great acclaim. With his latest project Live at the V&A, he…
Set free?
A couple of evenings before writing this, I had the privilege of attending the first art song recital with a live audience at London’s Wigmore Hall since it re-opened to socially-distanced audiences in line with the UK’s current ‘roadmap’ for ending lockdown. The concert was an all-Schubert progamme, performed by soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist…
Pastoral, personal, political: Sieben before, during and beyond lockdown
Matt Howden is a Sheffield-based singer, songwriter, composer, violinist, looping/sequencing technology expert, and teacher/practitioner of sound design and production. An independent, unstoppable musical force who somehow finds enough room under the radar to soar, he is always unpredictable, always reliable. One might have thought the restrictions imposed by the pandemic would slow him down a…
Spired and emotional: the Oxford Lieder Festival 2020
On paper, the Oxford Lieder festival (wholly online this year, for contagious reasons) ended about a month ago. But not for me. Right up to the last minute, I’ve been extracting the maximum value I possibly can from my catch-up pass, viewing as many concerts as possible before the on-demand video archive finally vanishes from…
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