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1 week ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
The Early Music vocal ensemble is joined by lutenist Jonas Nordberg for performances of works by Carlo Gesualdo, Alessandro Piccinini and Giovanni Kapsberger. The history of music is full of quirky composers, but the Prince of Weird was surely Carlo Gesualdo.
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2 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Jamie Barton joins James Baillieu for the conclusion of his one-day marathon at Wigmore Hall. “Quite frankly, if someone asked me to give three recitals in a day, I’d laugh and run away.”So joked mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as she introduced the second half of Saturday evening’s concert. This, though, is exactly what the ever-popular and always-brilliant pianist James Baillieu did on Saturday on his ‘focus day’ at Wigmore Hall.
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3 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Music old and new for guitar from the multi-Grammy nominee and colleagues. As Sean Shibe remarked in his introduction to the second half of Wednesday evening’s concert, guitarists often have to beg, steal and borrow repertoire, and in this he’s not wrong: it’s rare to attend a ‘classical’ guitar recital that doesn’t include arrangements of pieces originally written for other instruments.
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3 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Old favourites and a new commission from ‘twelve singers without a conductor’ at Wigmore Hall. Happy Birthday, Stile Antico! Or, in the language they the group is more used to singing: ‘Felix sit natalis annum!’. It’s difficult to believe it, but it has been 20 years since the ensemble first officially sang together, winning the Friends Prize at the 2005 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Mezzo-soprano Rachel Payne and pianist Jack Tyndale with art songs from Britain, the USA and elsewhere, at Kings Place. A short recital of art song seemed a perfect thing for a warm May Day evening; the programme contained some old favourites to bask in and a few unknowns to excite.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
A round up of this year’s forthcoming BBC Proms season, including concerts marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, debut Proms performances in Bradford (to celebrate its status as 2025 UK City of Culture) and Sunderland, performances of nineteen world, European or UK premières, and the first all-night Prom for over 40 years.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Stephen Layton directs vocal ensemble Polyphony in music appropriate for Passiontide as part of Sinfonia Smith Square’s Easter Festival. This time of year, it’s nearly impossible for concert-goers to avoid a performance of one or other of the Bach Passion settings, and, indeed, Polyphony will be performing, along with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the St John Passion at Smith Square on Friday afternoon.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Two Coleridge-Taylors for the price of one, plus contemporary American works and Haydn from this top-class orchestra. Chineke! orchestra simply gets better and better. Not that they were anything less than good to start with, but since my first review back in 2017 they have honed their sound such that it now competes with any of the big-name British orchestras.
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2 months ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
Affinity Chamber Orchestra join GCU for works by Brahms, Dyson, Haydn, Howells and Vaughan Williams at Sinfonia Smith Square. Like cider and Rosie, string orchestras and the music of the English Pastoralists are often paired in a heavenly combination, and Goldsmiths Choral Union explored this coupling on Friday evening as the basis for their programme ‘Hymns of Paradise’.
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2 months ago | 
musicomh.com | Barry Creasy
A Mendelssohn rarity, a new work commemorating the sinking of HMT Lancastria, and Rossini’s florid Stabat Mater from the impressive office-based choir. Apart from his oratorio Elijah, works from Mendelssohn’s considerable choral oeuvre seldom get an outing these days, and his 1839 setting of Psalm 114 (‘When Israel came out of Egypt’) for chorus and orchestra is a distinct rarity.
