July 2021 reviews for The Times

Awakening Shadow
5 July 2021

Generally in an opera there are a few elements I would expect: characters, a story and at the very least some dramatic spark. So I’m still struggling to work out in what sense Luke Styles and Benjamin Britten’s Awakening Shadow is, as it was billed, a chamber opera. Just to clarify, this isn’t a recently rediscovered work by the long-dead Britten resurrected by Styles. Awakening Shadow is a stitching together of Britten’s Canticles, five intense, individual works on religious themes written over four decades.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/awakening-shadow-review-a-disappointing-new-chamber-opera-inspired-by-britten-jjnxbkcp3

Cendrillon/Acis and Galatea

13 July 2021

Rossini turns Cinderella into a moral fable, Massenet conjures sumptuous fairytale magic. Pauline Viardot gives us a salon entertainment that charms and delights, its three swift acts taking Cinders from rags to riches, daydreams to true love in little over an hour. Viardot may only recently be coming back into vogue, but she was revered in her lifetime, as Berlioz put it, as “one of the greatest artists in the history of music”. She sang, she played the piano, she hosted artistic soirees and, after retiring from the stage, she focused on composing. Two hundred songs and several operettas later, Viardot reached Cendrillon, which had its premiere in 1904 when she was 83.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cendrillon-acis-and-galatea-review-musical-delights-in-a-pair-of-buxton-operas-l9s9tqshc

The Return of Ulysses

14 July 2021

For some of its season this year, Longborough Festival Opera has decamped from its lovely opera house to a bright red big top located on an adjacent field. Once inside there’s a sense of the outdoors: a breeze ruffles part of the set’s shimmering silver foil fringe curtain; light aircraft buzz overhead. The stage is in the round. We are close enough to see the looks in the performers’ eyes; we are totally enveloped by the thrilling power of their voices.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-return-of-ulysses-review-longborough-fields-a-superb-cast-for-monteverdi-lsq9x77vh

June 2021 reviews for The Times

Handel's Amadigi at Garsington Opera
21 June 2021

Anyone staging Handel’s “magic” opera Amadigi needs a few tricks at the ready. In her new production for Garsington Opera, the director-designer Netia Jones puts on a winning show. The work’s supposed weaknesses — the plot is tissue-thin; there are only four main roles whose string of da capo arias leave long stretches with little interaction — become strengths. Not least, the small cast makes this baroque rarity ideal for Covid times; it’s also being staged by English Touring Opera this autumn. They’ll have to work hard to match Jones’s inventiveness; she gives us visual spectacle yet focuses on the central human drama.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/amadigi-review-handels-magic-opera-casts-its-spell-tpjjm3jst

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla

24 June 2021

The words were poignant, the singing was superlative and the connection between performer and audience was almost tangible. Reader, I’ll confess: as Mahler faced death and God in his song Um Mitternacht, the music shifting from profound sombreness to glorious surrender, tears came to my eyes.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cbso-grazinyte-tyla-review-the-mirga-magic-is-back-f2wcb528r

BEAM/Britten Sinfonia

28 June 2021

If you’re watching BEAM, there’s a good chance that you know Nadine Benjamin as one of Britain’s fast-rising star sopranos. But who is she really? That’s a question Benjamin’s impactful autobiographical music-theatre piece, subtitled Everybody Can Stand In Their Own Light, explores over 70 minutes with still photos, video projections, lighting design and the collaboration of a number of individuals, including the excellent Decus Ensemble and music director Jan Rautio.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beam-review-soprano-nadine-benjamins-searingly-honest-look-at-her-life-vhrkr7qgl

May 2021 reviews for The Times

Alice Coote, Philharmonia/John Eliot Gardiner
10 May 2021

Alice Coote singing Britten’s Phaedra is a remarkable thing to behold. It’s hard to imagine a more fearless performance of this one-woman cantata based on Racine, telling the tragic, transgressive tale of a woman who lusts after her stepson, then seeks absolution through suicide by poison. There’s nowhere to hide: the composer’s final vocal work is an intense, compact drama. And every note and word the British mezzo-soprano sang was utterly clear.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/philharmonia-gardiner-review-alice-coote-is-a-remarkable-phaedra-sf6tw0w2q

London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle

10 May 2021

More than a year has passed since the London Symphony Orchestra last performed in its Barbican home, when Antonio Pappano conducted Britten and Vaughan Williams that spoke of sorrow and war. So much has happened since then. The LSO’s chief conductor, Simon Rattle, is off to Munich and Pappano is to take over his LSO post. The ambitious London concert hall project has been shelved. And the pandemic has sharpened our focus when it comes to music exploring the meaning of life and death, works such as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lso-rattle-review-song-of-the-earth-finds-real-power-at-the-end-g7zfmscnq

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon

27 May 2021

Until its summer series began last week, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra hadn’t played to a live audience in Symphony Hall since the start of the pandemic, save one concert in November. For the orchestra’s second programme back home the conductor Nicholas Collon kept those patient concertgoers in mind. The “deep connection” struck by Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony with the Soviet audience at its 1937 premiere inspired him, he explained in an affable introduction.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cbso-collon-review-emotions-run-high-for-shostakovich-gc6hhrfmh

Ensemble Marsyas

31 May 2021

In reality, a trip to Italy may be tricky for a while yet, but there’s nothing stopping musical flights of fancy abroad. Ensemble Marsyas gave us a flavour of Rome with its Handel programme at the Wigmore Hall, culminating in the delicious cantata Amarilli Vezzosa (Il Duello Amoroso), written during the composer’s formative Italian sojourn. Just imagine the Roman palace in which it had its premiere in 1708 (or google Palazzo Bonelli); no quarantine necessary.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ensemble-marsyas-review-delightful-musical-flights-of-fancy-from-handel-sg2w0x3lh

Notebook: 1 January 2021

1 January 2021. I don't buy into the whole new year, new you spiel but, boy, am I glad to turn the page on 2020.  I even have a new diary, though I haven't dared open it yet. I haven't quite forgotten how life diverged so wildly from the one planned on paper last spring. Maybe this year I'll only write things in using pencil.

Sometimes it's the tiny, silly things that count. Slightly rushing so that I could be the first in the pool, the first to slip into the water today. It was warmer than I expected, the steam rising off the surface and blurring the faces of swimmers gliding and splashing along, identifiable by their various bright swimming caps.

I didn't actually feel like swimming today.  Then I remembered that it could be taken away suddenly and soon. Bristol is still in Tier 3: we can meet outside in sixes, we can swim in outdoor pools. But that will change if we move up into Tier 4. Our minds are strange, aren't they? Nothing else had altered, but knowing that swims could be in short supply did make me more grateful to be able to go today. And as always, as soon as I'm in the water, I can't remember what I was worrying about.