Musicians are at a precipice – but does the government care? Given a fanatical Brexiteer cabinet fixated on impossible dreams, and some stunningly inadequate ministers in charge of important a...Read More
War Requiem, ENO Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is all bells, children’s choirs, trumpet calls, choral shouts, solo voices leaping out like flames, and angular melodic lines over a ground-bass of ...Read More
Paul Bunyan, ENO at Wilton’s As the poet Stephen Spender lamented, Britain never got the great opera which should have resulted from that seemingly dream pairing, Benjamin Britten and WH Auden. The...Read More
Chineke! Queen Elizabeth Hall Over the last half-century the outbuildings of the Royal Festival Hall have been threatened with one grandiose makeover after another: people have always been ambi...Read More
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ENO, 1.3.18 ENO had two fine house productions to choose between, for their revival of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They could have chosen Christopher A...Read More
‘If there’s no blood, there’s no entertainment,’ shouts Netia Jones, as her Puck catapults himself high into the air, and lands with a sickening thump on the rehearsal room floor. ‘Gosh – ...Read More
Out, brief candle! As life nears its end, thoughts can acquire urgent clarity. This truth may not be particularly perceptible in literature, because novelists find endless ways of disguising it. But i...Read More
Should we know the story behind the creation of a piece of music, or should we let it speak for itself? The British cellist Steven Isserlis poses this question in the liner note to a CD he has just re...Read More
Soprano Carolyn Sampson, counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, and pianist Joseph Middleton gave a lunchtime Prom at the Cadogan Hall which was chamber music of the highest quality. The first half consisted of...Read More