NEW! A Major Work by Stanford to be Premiered – 99 Years Late!
20/07/2018
John Quinn discusses Stanford’s Mass Via Victrix, Op 173 with Adrian Partington
Adrian Partington conducting at the Three Choirs Festival,
July 2016 Ash Mills
NEW! Grimeborn Opera Festival 2018 Starts on 24 July
20/07/2018
Arcola announces 2018 Grimeborn Opera Festival
‘Dalston’s attitude-packed alternative opera festival’ – Time Out
For full details and how to book tickets click here Read more
NEW! Snape Proms 2018 from 1 August
20/07/2018
SNAPE PROMS 2018: 1 – 31 AUGUST
Full listings and tickets online at www.snapemaltings.co.uk |Tel: 01728 687110 Read more
NEW! Oxford Chamber Music Festival October 2018
19/07/2018
World-renowned Oxford Chamber Music Festival heading in exciting new directions
ELEMENTS
October 3 – 7 October
Philip Pullman ‘The festival is a national treasure’ Read more
NEW! Saffron Opera Group Presents Parsifal in Saffron Walden on 16 September
11/07/2018
SAFFRON OPERA GROUP CONTINUES WAGNERIAN TRIUMPHS
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ENSEMBLE PRESENTS PARSIFAL
REVIEWS OF THE RING CYCLE
‘Saffron Opera is now a major Wagnerian force’ (Wagner News)
‘Intellectually as well as emotionally engaging… shattering’ (Operissima.org)
‘The whole performance seemed to transcend itself’ (The Guardian)
After triumphant performances of the Ring Cycle and Die Meistersinger – which have been hailed in the national press as some of the UK’s most ambitious and successful British Wagnerian events of the last decade – Saffron Opera Group now turns its attention to Wagner’s final masterpiece: Parsifal. The performance will take place on 16 September 16 in Saffron Hall. Read more
NEW! Schubert Life Death Fantasies: An Equation
11/07/2018
Arthur and Lucas Jussen (c) Marco Borggreve
The one certainty of life is death, said a wit.
Moreover, the life death process is operative thousands of times a minute within all livings things –animal as well as vegetable. Understanding what humans have in common with a blade of grass is not without its charm, once you’ve got over the shock. But until the relatively recent advent of microbiology, Western medicine blithely operated in ignorance of this fundamental. Microbiology is, however, the very cornerstone of Eastern medical practice, and has been since before written records were kept, which is long before the year the presumed Noah went into the presumed ark.
And Schubert, unobserved by most of us, spent a lifetime exploring this phenomenon in music. The OED’s phenomenal says perceptible through the senses or through immediate experience. Schubert invokes both.
And perhaps nowhere quite so impressively as the Fantasies in F for piano duet.
Two young Dutch brothers have with surgical precision, taken this music to pieces, but unlike other King’s Men, they have also put Schubert together again. Also with surgical precision. The Jussen brothers and others mentioned in comparison are all available on YouTube (click here), so readers can conveniently hear these differences for themselves. Read more
NEW! THE CONDUCTOR ALEXANDER SLADKOVSKY IN CONVERSATION WITH GREGOR TASSIE
05/07/2018
Alexander Sladkovsky Talks to Gregor Tassie
Alexander Sladkovsky
The recent highly praised recordings on Melodiya of Mahler and Shostakovich by Sladkovsky’s Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra reveal they are a top-class ensemble sharing comparisons with the finest Russian orchestras in Moscow and St Petersburg. Read more
UPDATED! Zurich Opera in 2018/2019 and Beyond
01/07/2018
Zurich Opera have announced details of next season
Zurich Opera House
Updated 2 July: Musical Chairs at Zurich Opera – New General Music Director from 2021
Zurich Opera has announced today that its current General Music Director, Fabio Luisi, will leave by mutual agreement as from the start of 2021/2022 season, one year before his contract officially expires.
His successor will be Gianandrea Noseda. Noseda and Luisi are roughly the same age, coming up to 60 in a few years. Read more
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