Lars Vogt remembered, By Michael Church Can one play vibrato on the piano? Since it’s just a box of hammers, with each making only momentary contact with its string, the common-sense answer m...Read More
Orfeo/Cosi fan tutte Garsington Opera, Wormsley The director and designer of Garsington’s new Orfeo – John Caird and Robert Jones – invite their audience to get involved in the ‘immersive arti...Read More
The Silver Lake/The Seraglio English Touring Opera Year after year, English Touring Opera’s resourceful director Ed Conway turns up trumps, and this year is no exception. Kurt Weill’s Expressionis...Read More
Ragged Music Festival, Copperfield Road, East London Beating a path through the back streets of Tower Hamlets, I find myself at a stunningly good chamber concert. It begins with Tamsin Waley-Cohen an...Read More
Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes In his pre-show sales pitch the French-Canadian director-choreographer Renaud Doucet has announced, with a foot-stamping petulance one more usuall...Read More
The three-string shamisen lute is a brashly assertive instrument, but Japanese composers and performers are now exploring its hitherto unsuspected sonic potential. Honjoh Hidejiro, the leader in this ...Read More
The Magic Flute, Coliseum Idomeneo, Hackney Empire Like Ko-Ko’s ‘little list’ in The Mikado, there’s a moment in The Magic Flute which seems designed for topical allusion. As the Freemasons ...Read More
Leeds International Piano Competition, 2018 When the redoubtable Fanny Waterman set up the Leeds Piano Competition in 1963, no one could have predicted its longevity, or the effect it would have on pi...Read More
Die Zauberflöte, Garsington Opera at Wormsley When the lights go up on Netia Jones’s production of Die Zauberflöte, we see that she’s turned the stage into a near-simulacrum of the formal garde...Read More