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| Ben Goldscheider & Gavin Higgins on the London premiere of Gavin Higgins’ Horn Concerto with London Chamber Orchestra (Photograph: Jerome Weatherald) |
There have been simply on 80 live performance critiques and 53 opera critiques with every part from Lampe’s The Dragon of Wantley to Bizet’s Carmen on the BBC Proms. There was new opera by Stephen McNeff and revivals of Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Story, Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert, and Jonathan Dove’s group opera, The Monster within the Maze, in addition to Baroque rarities by Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Gazzaniga and Jommelli. And we heard horn participant Ben Goldscheider in two terrific new horn concertos, by Gavin Higgins and Huw Watkins, and Gavin Higgins was again with a revival of his terrific Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra.
Out of the UK, our new correspondent, Robert, began his Letter from Florida, together with visits to Palm Seashore Opera and Sarasota Opera. We made a return go to to Le piano symphonique in Lucerne, the Dresden Music Pageant and the Göttingen Pageant, while Tony caught the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. We acquired a heat welcome on the Glasperlenspiel Pageant in Tartu, Estonia the place a programme of my music was carried out.
We heard a advantageous account of Massenet’s Werther in Zurich and a revelatory traditionally knowledgeable efficiency of Wagner’s Die Walküre on the Dresden Music Pageant and Tony Cooper revisited Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Ring Cycle on the Staatsoper, Berlin.
Nonetheless with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Florence caught the following instalment of Regent Opera’s highly effective new chamber model of the cycle, Siegfried and transgender tenor Holden Madagame wrote about singing Mime within the manufacturing, while Tony heard the London Opera Firm’s full-scale live performance efficiency of Siegfried.
Across the UK we made three visits to Opera North, and two to WNO, plus serving to Leeds Lieder rejoice its twentieth anniversary, in addition to catching a number of the Summer season festivals at Glyndebourne, Garsington, and the Grange Pageant, while in London there was Opera Holland Park, Grimeborn and naturally the BBC Proms.
It was a yr of rarities galore, however specific highlights should embrace a primary likelihood to discover the songs of Robert Kahn, and a uncommon outing for Ethel Smyth’s The Jail, while Nigel Foster’s London Music Pageant gave us the possibility to discover the track output of Gustav Holst.
These stay worrying and difficult occasions for the humanities within the UK, while the outlook can typically look bleak it’s heartening to seek out so many artists and corporations discovering methods to display the worth of the humanities in so some ways.
As ever, you’ll be able to discover additional in our not too long ago up to date archives of reside critiques, file critiques, and interviews.
