Handel
James Bowman, Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore HallSaturday, 21 May 2011
The Wigmore Hall was full to capacity last night, its crowd gathered to pay homage to a great musician at the end of his career, and to discover the talents of a great musician at the very beginning of his. While Alfred Deller might have been the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Handel, Russians, Labèques, SackbutsFriday, 08 April 2011
There is a change to our coverage of classical CD releases. Since theartsdesk began in September 2009, we have been reviewing on a monthly basis. As of today we're switching to weekly and our round-up of the new classical albums will now appear... Read more... |
Rodelinda, Britten Theatre, Royal College of MusicMonday, 14 March 2011
A highlight of the London Handel Festival’s annual season is the opera, generally chosen from one of the dustier, more spidery corners of the composer’s repertoire. What a surprise then to see Rodelinda taking its turn this year. An undisputed... Read more... |
Giving thanks for La StupendaTuesday, 15 February 2011
Rumour has it that Snoop Dogg may be serenading the royals there in a couple of months' time, but this afternoon it was the most agile, even and full soprano voice of all which rang from the vaulting of Westminster Abbey. Thanks to the noble co-... Read more... |
Classical CDs Round-Up 15Friday, 21 January 2011
This month’s carefully sifted new releases include some quirky Americana and a piano filled with ping-pong balls. A Baroque specialist plays some ripe orchestral transcriptions and a neglected cello concerto gets a new ending. Six Danish symphonies... Read more... |
Cecilia Bartoli Sings Handel, Barbican HallWednesday, 08 December 2010
Cecilia Bartoli invites you to her party, she stands on stage beaming and welcoming you as her guest, about to serve up a banquet of song. This is what last night’s concert felt like in the glowing warmth of this remarkable Italian mezzo-soprano’s... Read more... |
Handel's Alcina, BarbicanSunday, 05 December 2010
Classical music does not get any cooler than mezzo Vesselina Kasarova. She jived. She grooved. She shuffled. She shimmied. She possessed the Barbican stage last night, an awesome black jumpsuit hanging off her rangy, kinetic figure, her neck... Read more... |
Mingardo, Gritton, The English Concert, Bicket, BarbicanSaturday, 27 November 2010
Before Mozart, there was Pergolesi. The 18th century couldn't get enough of the Neapolitan prodigy. He was the first great tragic musical wünderkind of the Enlightenment, prefiguring what Mozart would become for the 19th century. Like Mozart,... Read more... |
Sir Charles Mackerras Memorial Concert, Royal Festival HallFriday, 05 November 2010
In the last year of his life he was, as a colleague noted when we learned of Charles Mackerras’s death, the wise old gamekeeper in the spring forest of Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen. No wonder Mackerras, we were told last night by his conductor... Read more... |
The English Concert, Alice Coote, Wigmore HallThursday, 28 October 2010
There is an excess about the Wigmore Hall’s Arts and Crafts cupola that lends itself to extravagant musical passions. The mural’s cloudy images may profess to picture music as an abstract creature, but the golden tangle of rays and warmly naked... Read more... |
Radamisto, English National OperaFriday, 08 October 2010
If interior décor could shout, then last night’s music might have proved altogether incidental. The curtain rises to reveal a set gift-wrapped – ramparts, city walls and all – in the brightest of hot-pink damasks: a Nicky Haslam acid trip. Ladies... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Ailish Tynan on RadamistoSunday, 03 October 2010
Ailish Tynan plays a short, fat, bald man in David Alden's staging of Handel's Radamisto at ENO. It is, she says, an occupational hazard when venturing into the cross-gender world of 18th-century opera. That Tynan is one of our brightest young stars... Read more... |
