Music Gallery
News & Reviews
Purcell Odes: The English Concert, St John’s Smith Square
Melancholy never seems far away from any concert these days, and the final celebratory piece aside, the English Concert gave us a Purcell programme to milk it. St John’s, completely cleared of furniture, the orchestra luxuriously spaced in the wide-open nave, a very...
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Critics’ Circle Music Awards 2019
The Music Section of the Critics’ Circle is delighted to announce the winners of our Annual Awards for 2019. The Lifetime Achievement Award is a special category, rather than an annual award, and is given here by the music section to a conductor whose career has had a...
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Luisa Miller, Coliseum
ENO no-no It is easy to see why Verdi was attracted to Schiller’s tragedy about the class system, Kabale und Liebe. A genius from the lower orders, Verdi believed in freedom and was classless. English-speaking critics patronise the Schiller play because of the poison...
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Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Welsh National Opera’s new (to the UK – it first saw the light of day last spring in Bonn) show is a visual triumph. The costumes (Marie-Jeanne Lecca) and set (Raimund Bauer) are arresting. The latter is a series of frames, so the characters seem to be stepping in and...
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