Best concerts and opera in April and for Easter
The Easter story, two literary greats cross over into music, and composers tackle war and peace
The Easter story, two literary greats cross over into music, and composers tackle war and peace
Enjoy the best of several musical worlds when virtuoso guitarist Sean Shibe performs music by JS Bach in a programme with a thrilling finale: Shibe playing, with the benefit of playback, all eight parts in modernist Steve Reich's exciting Electric Counterpoint. Also on the programme, music from Shibe’s native Scotland and Buddha, by the US composer Julius Eastman.
Read more ...Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale continues to alarm and fascinate, and to emerge in other forms. Now comes the timely revival of the opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders that has all the elements of the original story. A fine cast includes mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey (pictured).
Read more ...The incomparable mezzo-soprano and brilliant communicator Joyce DiDonato sings music through the ages inspired by our fragile natural world. She is joined by the electrifying Italian Baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under Maxim Emelyanychev in arias by Handel, Gluck, Cavalli and others.
Read more ...For sheer eloquence through music there are few to compare with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, and in Beethoven's exploratory Piano Concerto No 4 she finds both the composer's poetry and his personality. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski pops back from Munich to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the first UK performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s blackly humorous Marche Fatale, and then sets out across the great expanses of Anton Bruckner’s massive Sixth Symphony.
The great retelling in music of the Easter story marks the start of Holy Week. David Hill conducts the Bach Choir and orchestra Florilegium with tenor Ed Lyon as the Evangelist, and soloists Mark Stone, Sophie Bevan, Jane Irwin, Toby Spence and Roderick Williams (pictured), plus young voices from Finchley Children's Music Group and Southwark Cathedral Girls' Choir. This expansive and thoughtful is sung in two parts, with a long lunch interval from 12.15PM to 2.15PM
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The young Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi did not live to fulfil the astonishing promise he showed with his captivating setting of solemn words for Easter. In his Stabat Mater, two high voices combine movingly to retrace the sorrow of Jesus's mother Mary. Soloists this evening are soprano Anna Devin and counter-tenor Hugh Cutting. Simon Over conducts the exciting young orchestra Southbank Sinfonia in a performance of the masterpiece that forms part of the Easter Festival of music at St John's Smith Square.
Read more ...A very rare appearance in London by Croatia's premier musicians, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. With conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, soloist Tamsin Waley-Cohen (pictured) performs Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in a programme that opens with four short songs for voice and orchestra by Dora Pejačević sung by Croatian soprano Marija Vidović. In the second half, Mahler’s mould-breaking Symphony No. 1.
Read more ...Outstanding early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music is directed from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings (pictured) in Bach's other great Easter work, his St John Passion. Nicholas Mulroy sings the Evangelist with Dingle Yandell as Christus, and other 'roles' sung by sopranos Zoe Brookshaw and Jessica Cale, altos Anna Harvey and Jessica Dandy, tenor Hugo Hymas tenor, and basses George Humphreys and William Gaunt. A Good Friday feast of music, preceded by a free talk at 2PM.
Read more ...The novelist writes knowledgeably and with passion about music from many genres in her books and essays, and now she takes to the stage to explore its magic even further. The author of White Teeth took a job as a jazz singer while at university, and her 2016 novel Swing Time, delights in music and dance. This entertaining concert reveals the music and the artists that have inspired her.
Read more ...A timely concert that depicts both conflict and resolution. As war loomed in 1940, the young Benjamin Britten grieved for a stricken world in his Sinfonia da Requiem. Three years later, as Britain weathered the Blitz, the 71-year-old Ralph Vaughan Williams promised a vision of peace in his serene Fifth Symphony. Both works are played by the LPO under Edwards Gardner (pictured), plus the UK premiere of LPO composer-in-residence Brett Dean's new Cello Concerto, written for tonight's soloist, Alban Gerhardt.
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