Hints and tips:
...discovery. ★★★★☆ ‘Britten: Violin Concerto, Chamber Works’ is released by Harmonia Mundi...
...It is just over 50 years since the premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice....
...The rest of MacMillan’s programme was rooted in the north of Europe, with Pärt’s Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and the radiant string threnody of Rautavaara’s Into the...
...The highlight of this programme at Milton Court Concert Hall in London was the premiere of a memorable new song cycle by Richard Blackford....
...Refiner’s Fire: The Academy of Ancient Music and the Historical Performance Revolution by Richard Bratby (Elliott and Thompson) Born in the heat of the period performance revolution, UK ensemble the Academy...
...Having cheated death at the eleventh hour, ENO is opening its new season with Britten’s Peter Grimes....
...Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, lively though it is, made rather small beer for a concert climax....
...Focusing on works that commemorate the Holocaust written by four different composers — Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich — Jeremy Eichler sets out to explore how...
...The key performer is conductor Carlo Rizzi, who heats up the drama, and probably the fine Britten Sinfonia, to boiling point....
...From his international standing as a composer, Britten was able to bring in musician friends and colleagues at a similar level to perform....
...Dalia Stasevska conducts Britten’s filigree score with bold colours and tougher accents than many, giving this revival its own self-confident air....
...Based in Cambridge, the medium-sized Britten Sinfonia finds itself left with precious little time to plan its survival....
...Stravinsky rubs shoulders with Britten, post-minimalist John Adams and even, in the score’s word-setting, Sondheim, to create a kaleidoscope of quickly changing moods....
...The role of Elizabeth I was beautifully sung by mezzo Christine Rice, even if Britten probably intended more of a mature, lyric-dramatic soprano....
...Starting this weekend at Britten Pears Arts’ “Summer at Snape”, he has concerts booked until the end of April 2024 for himself and his Gavin Bryars Ensemble....
...“I came up with some proposals, more or less on the back of an envelope, and Roger Wright [chief executive of Britten Pears Arts, which runs the festival] said yes to all of them,” says Williams....
...As in her Britten stagings, Warner favours a naturalist telling of the story, without an agenda, on an open panoramic stage....
...No part of Benjamin Britten’s legacy is more treasurable than his song cycles....
...Obsessive love has proved fertile ground for opera composers from Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle to Britten’s Death in Venice. In terms of its drama, The Dead City is a more difficult sell....
...Aside from the Parisian dazzle of that scene, Richard Jones’s production from 2017 is serviceable but rather cold at heart....
...March 30 to July 28; further information here Performance ‘Salome’, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma Richard Strauss’s operatic adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play....
...The cast is drawn from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Artists Programme and Britten Pears Young Artists Programme....
...Here was a conductor who always achieved a good standard of playing and proved himself equally strong in composers as diverse as Wagner and Britten, Janáček and Strauss....
...The Britten Sinfonia’s most recent concert was a three-part extravaganza involving opera, dance and choral music, ending in an explosion of styles, embracing folk, jazz and world music....
...It seems unlikely, though in retrospect his descent into depression and suicide mirrors some of opera’s most desolate characters, from Donizetti’s Lucia to Britten’s Peter Grimes....
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